The Producer Price Index has for the first time since the novel Coronavirus was reported in Ghana in March reduced marginally.
The index which measures the average change over time in the prices received by domestic producers for the production of their goods and services decreased from the 9.5% recorded in June to 9.3% in July.
According to the Ghana Statistical Service, the decrease in all Industry Inflation Rate was as a result of a decrease in the inflation rate in the Utility sub-sector.
Head of Industry Statistics at the Ghana Statistical Service, Mr. Anthony Kraka, shedding light on the various sector changes that led to the drop in the PPI said: “Inflation for domestic producers begun the year 2020 at 14.5 percent, dropping to 10.5 percent in February and dropping further to 6.8 percent in March. The PPI began a study climb in April 2020, recording a rate of 7.4 percent and increasing consistently to 9.5 in June, before reducing marginally in July to 9.3 percent.”
The Ghana Statistical Service revised its provisional PPI figure for June from 8.7 percent to 9.5 percent, leading to the marginal decline of 0.2 percentage points recorded for the month of July.
A further look at the data, showed that the producer price inflation in the Mining and Quarrying sub-sector increased by 3.0 percentage points over the June 2020 rate of 35.2 percent to record 38.2 percent in July 2020.
The producer inflation for Manufacturing which constitutes more than two-thirds of the total industry increased by 0.6 percentage points to record 4.4 percent.
The utility sub-sector recorded an inflation rate of 5.8 percent for July 2020 indicating a decreased of 6.2 percentage point over the June 2020 rate of 12.0 percent.