Latest data released by the Ghana Statistical Service, GSS, indicates that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for December 2020 has increased to 10.4 percent.
The December inflation figure is 0.6 percentage points higher than the 9.8% percent recorded in November 2020.
The Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) measures the change over time in the general price level of goods and services that households acquire for the purpose of consumption.
The increase also shows that government did not miss the revised inflation target of about 11 percent announced in the 2020 mid-year budget statement.
This means that prices of goods and services recorded an increase of 10.4% in December 2020 compared to the same in 2019.
Meanwhile, month-on-month inflation between November 2020 and December 2020 was 0.9% and average year-on-year inflation for the year 2020 stood at 9.9%.
Speaking at a press conference, the Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Annim explained that the high rate of food inflation is the predominant reason for increase in overall inflation in the month of December last year.
“Food contributed 59.1% to the total inflation. This is the highest contribution recorded since April 2020 when COVID-19 started to affect Ghana. The increased rate of food inflation is the predominant reason for increased overall inflation, as, without this increase, year-on-year inflation would have been lower than last month,” he said.
He also stated that food and non-alcoholic beverages registered an inflation rate of 14.1%, whilst that of non-food recorded an inflation rate of 7.7%, a decrease from the previous month [November 2020] of 8.3%.
“Within the Food Division, Vegetables (24.2%) was the subclass with the highest rate of inflation, followed by Fish and other Seafood (22.9%). Overall month-on-month Food inflation was 1.5% , 1.2 percentage point higher than last month [November 2020] and higher than both on average in 2020 and in the same month last year.
For non-Food Inflation, after a few months of high inflation for Transport, December saw low inflation for Transport; 4.8% year-on-year and 0.1% month-on-month as compared to an average 7.8% year-on-year and 0.4% month-on-month for 2020,” he said.
He further noted that, “The inflation of imported goods was 6.1%, up from 5.6% last month, while the inflation of local goods was 12.1% on average, up from 11.5% last month. Month-on-month inflation for imported goods was 0.3% and for locally produced goods was 1.1%.”
Regional Inflation
At the regional level, the Upper West region recorded the least inflation of 2.1%, followed by Volta with 3.8%.
Inflation was very high in the Greater Accra region, recording 16.3%. Ashanti region registered the second-highest inflation rate of 9.4%.
For food inflation, the Upper West region recorded a deflation [reduction in general level of prices] of -0.4%. However, the Greater Accra registered the highest rate of inflation of 19.3%.
The Greater Accra region again registered the highest inflation rate of 14.2% in the Non-Food inflation basket, whilst the Volta region recorded the least inflation rate of 1.5%.
