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Business News for Thursday, November 12, 2020
Source: 3 News
2020-11-12
GSS says the inflation rate for October 2020 was 10.1%
The inflation rate for October 2020 was 10.1 percent, 0.3 percentage points lower than last month, the Ghana Statistics Service (GSS) announced on Wednesday, November 11.
According to the GSS, month-to-month inflation between September 2020 and October 2020 was 0.2 percent.
This contrasts with the negative monthly inflation observed in the previous two months.
However, this 0.2 percent is still less than that observed before Covid or in the months after Covid-19, GSS added.
On average, monthly inflation between April and July 2020 was 0.9 percent and in the six months prior to Covid-19, the month-to-month inflation rate was 0.7 percent.
Once again, only two of the 13 divisions had higher than average inflation rates: Housing, Water, Electricity and Gas (20.2%) and Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages (12.6%).
Regionally, headline annual inflation ranged from 1.6 percent in the Upper West region to 15.2 percent in the Greater Accra region.
In Greater Accra, the difference between food inflation (14.0%) and non-food inflation (16.0%) was only 2 percentage points, while in the Ashanti region this difference was 13 percentage points (17 , 6% compared to 4.6%).
On a monthly basis, the North Region registered the highest inflation (1.1%) and the High West the lowest (-2.4%).
On average, rural areas showed higher month-on-month inflation (0.3%) but lower year-on-year inflation (8.8%) than urban areas (0.2% month-on-month and 10.5% year-on-year).
The Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages Division recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 12.6%. This is 1.4 percentage points more than in August 2020 (11.2%).
This higher inflation rate for food means that food has a greater contribution to overall inflation. Food contributed 54.7% to headline inflation and therefore continues to be the predominant driver of year-on-year inflation.
Within the Food Division, Vegetables (24.9%) was the subclass with the highest inflation rates. This high inflation for vegetables is explained by the relatively low index for vegetables in October 2019.
Compared to September and November 2019, the inflation of Vegetables would be closer to the figures reported in recent months at around 17%. In line with previous months, the month-on-month inflation for Vegetables was negative (-1.6%). Monthly general food inflation was -1%.
In contrast to food inflation, non-food inflation decreased. Non-food year-on-year inflation stood at 8.3%. This is the lowest rate since April 2020.
Non-food annual inflation was 0.3%. Three Divisions had higher monthly inflation between September and October 2020 than the average recorded for these Divisions in the months leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The other ten divisions showed lower than average monthly inflation rates.
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