The continuous rise in the prices of food continues to dominate Ghana’s Consumer Price Index, CPI, pushing up inflation for June marginally.
June 2020 recorded a CPI of 119.8 relative to 118.6 in May 2020.
The year-on-year stands at 11.2 percent for 2020, from the 11.3 percent recorded in June 2019.
Inflation measures the average change over time in prices of goods and services.
The Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim, said food inflation dominated the overall inflation figure with 54.5% compared to other divisions.
“The month June 2020, we recorded a CPI of 119.8 relative to 118.6 in May 2020. This means that year on year inflation for the month of June 2020 was 11.2 percent. Literally, what this means is that between June 2019 and June 2020, prices of general goods and services have gone up on the average by 11.2 percent. On a month on month basis; that is between May 2020 and June 2020, you see a change in 1.0 percent. We do a further dis-aggregation on the year-on-year basis and we realized that from a year-on-year perspective, food continues to dominate its contribution to inflation. Specifically, food is contributing 54.5 percent relative to other divisions.”
Only two of the thirteen Divisions had higher than average inflation rates; Housing, Water, Electricity and Gas (21.3%) and Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages (13.8%)
Regional Inflation
At the regional level, the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 4.3% in the Upper West Region and Volta Region to 15.0% in Greater Accra. In all, but Greater Accra, Northern Region, and Upper East, Food inflation was higher than Non-Food Inflation. Especially in Western Region (21.3% Food inflation compared to 7.4% Non-food inflation) and Ashanti (20.6% Food inflation and 5.4% Food inflation), there was a wide difference between the Food and Non-Food inflation.
The overall month-on-month inflation was between 2.2% in the Upper West Region and 2.5% in Greater Accra. Ashanti Region, which saw the highest month-on-month inflation between April and May 2020 (3.9%), had a negative (-0.6%) month-on-month inflation between May and June 2020.
Overall, regions with high month-on-month inflation between April and May 2020, saw lower month-on-month inflation this month, and vice versa.++
