The Producer Price Inflation for January 2019 has dropped to 3.4 percent.
The drop represents a 1.0 percentage point decrease relative to the 4.4 percent recorded in December.
The Producer Price Inflation (PPI) measures the average change over time in the prices received by domestic producers for the production of their goods and services.
Speaking to Citi Business News on the drop of the producer price inflation Acting Government Statistician, David Kombat attributed the drop to the decrease in the inflation rates in the manufacturing sub-sector.
“The decrease in the inflation rate of the manufacturing sub-sector from 4.5 percent in December 2018 to 3.0 percent in January 2019 was as a result of decreases inflation rates of the manufacture of refined petroleum products and manufacture of food and food products.”
When looking at the producer price inflation by sector, the PPI in the Mining and Quarrying sub-sector increased by 0.4 percentage points over the December 2018 rate of 8.5 percent to record 8.9 percent in January 2019.
The producer inflation for Manufacturing which constitutes more than two-thirds of total industry decreased by 1.5 percentage points to record 3.0 percent. Meanwhile the utilities sub-sector recorded a rate of -0.1 percent, the same inflation rate as the rate for December 2018.
During the month of January 2019, five out of the sixteen major groups in the manufacturing sub sector recorded the inflation rates higher than the sector average of 3.0 percent.
Manufacture of basic metals recorded the highest inflation rate of 16.8 percent, while manufacture of machinery and equipment recorded 0.0 percent
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By: Anita Arthur/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana