INFLATION DROPS IN JULY
Inflation, the measure of the average change in prices of goods and services, dropped from 10% in June to 9.6% in July.
The decrease was influenced by a corresponding decline in the non-food inflation basket, which dipped from11.2% in June to 10.7% in July, representing a monthly change of negative 0.5%.
The acting Government Statistician, Mr. Baah Wadieh, explained at a news conference in Accra that the slight drop in inflation rate experienced in the non-food basket could be attributed to the decline in inflation for almost all the sub-groups under the non-food group.
“The downward trend is due to the fact that for the non-food group, inflation fell by 0.5% from a figure of 11.2 to 10.7%, and this actually is responsible for the fall in the inflation that we are observing,” he said.
He added that although the food group went up marginally from 7.3% in June to 7.4% in July, the food inflation did not have much effect on the trend of the overall inflation that was being reported.
That, he said, was because the weight for food was smaller than the weight of non-food, “so the changes in the non-food has a greater effect on the overall inflation.”
Mr. Wadieh explained that the non-food group had a major effect on the trend of inflation because there were some external factors that always kept the sector’s inflation up.
These factors, he said, included importation of various commodities under the non-food groups as well as policy interventions on locally produced goods of the non-food group.
“The locally produced goods too are influenced a lot by such policy interventions and changes in petroleum prices and utility bills,” he said.
Mr. Wadieh said the Upper West and East regions recorded the highest and lowest regional inflation rates, respectively.
While the Upper East Region recorded the lowest rate of 7.8% June inflation in the Upper West Region was 11.5%, being the highest compared with the other regions.
The government statistician added that the Upper West, Brong Ahafo, Western, Ashanti and Northern regions also recorded inflation rates higher than the national average of 9.6%.
