Economist, Dr. Patrick Asuming, is forecasting higher inflation rates in the country in the coming months before it takes a downward turn.
According to him, this is due to current market developments.
National inflation has hit 19.4% in March 2022, the highest since 2009. The rate is 3.7 percentage points higher than the 15.7 percent recorded in February 2022.
In an interview with Citi Business News, Economist, Dr. Patrick Asuming, highlighted how worrying the trend is and its impact on the country’s economic growth.
“It is worrying because the rate of increase is beginning to pick up quite substantially. If you check, even though they have been going up, the percentage points increases have been going up and this is a problem. And you also see that the inflation is now highly entrenched and heavily broad-based. So even though food inflation is the major driver, you see that non-food is picking up and then when you look at both imported and local, the inflation is going up on all of them. So, I think it’s worrying.”
“I think the Bank of Ghana will probably have to be careful before they keep jacking up rate. I think they will wait and observe how the last round of increases plays out. It’s not even been a month since they last increased it, so I don’t think they will be in a hurry to raise this rate. In any case, they had anticipated it, so I don’t think rate hikes should be the next action, but I think when you look at the numbers, they clearly suggest that the high inflation is going to remain with us for a while,” he said.
According to the Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, the jump in inflation rate to 19.4% in the third month of 2022 was mainly influenced by the increase in the prices associated with Food, Transport and Housing.
Food inflation deepened its dominance over non-food inflation, recording 22.4% as against the 17.4 percent recorded in the previous month and relative to the rate of non-food inflation of 17.0%.
However, on a month-on-month basis, the difference between food inflation and non-food inflation was relatively smaller as food inflation stood at 5% relative to 3.7 that was recorded for non-food inflation.
For the first time in a while, the Bono Ahafo region recorded the highest rate of inflation of 23.3%. Upper East region recorded the lowest rate of inflation of 12.5%.