New figures released by the Ghana Statistical Service, GSS, show that inflation rate for March 2020 remained unchanged at 7.8 percent.
By this, the rate at which prices of goods and services change over a period of time was the same for the February figure of 7.8 percent.
Also, this means that, in the month of March 2020, the general price level was 7.8% higher than in March 2019.
The food and non-alcoholic beverages division recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 8.4 percent. This is 0.5 percentage point higher than last month.
The data showed that this is the highest food inflation since the rebasing in August 2019, and translates in food being the predominant driver of year-on-year inflation.
It also cited that transportation has become a less important contributor to inflation.
The data further notes that, the price level of food and non-alcoholic beverages increased by 1.5%, between February 2020 and March 2020,
“Like last month, this rise is predominantly driven by an increase in price levels of vegetables and fruits and nuts,” the Service noted.
However, inflation of imported goods was 5.6%, while the inflation of local goods was 8.8% on average, indicating the highest rate of local inflation and the lowest rate of imported goods inflation since the rebasing in August 2019.
The differential inflation rate between locally produced items and imported items was 3.3 percentage points.
Also, the data indicates that, inflation for locally produced goods has been growing faster than inflation for imported goods over the last 5 months.
Regional inflation figures
On the regional inflation figures, 5 regions, namely Volta, Eastern, Western, Greater Accra and Northern Regions, recorded inflation rates above the national average of 7.8 percent with Volta Region recording the highest inflation of 9.2 percent.
This was followed by Eastern Region with 8.7 percent, Western Region, 8.5 percent, Greater Accra 8.3 percent and Northern with 8.1 percent.
The Upper West Region, like last month, had the lowest year-on-year inflation rate of 3.7 percent.
However, the Greater Accra Region experienced the lowest regional inflation since the rebasing in August 2019.
