The country’s inflation rate increased to 10.4 per cent in December last year from 9.8 per cent in November.
This represents a month-on-month change rate of 0.9 per cent and a year-on-year change rate of 2.5 per cent.
The Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim who announced this at news conference in Accra yesterday, attributed the rise in the December rate to the increase in food inflation, which rose from 5.3 per cent in November to 59.1 per cent in December.
He explained that vegetable and the fish and other seafood sub-classes drove the hike in food inflation rate, with 24.2 and 22.9 per cent increase respectively.
“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.
According to the Government Statistician, the hike in food inflation was the highest since April 2020 when the Coronavirus (COVID-19) started to affect the country.
Prof .Annim indicated that non-food inflation decreased from 8.3 per cent in November to 7.7 per cent in December with an average increase of 8.5 per cent in 2020.
Touching on the average inflation for the four quarters for the year 2020, Prof. Annim said the first quarter prior to the COVID-19 era witnessed the lowest inflation of 7.8 per cent, being the only quarter that had single digit inflation.
“The remaining three quarters for 2020 recorded double digit inflation; the second quarter had the highest inflation of 11.0 per cent, followed by third quarter, which had 10.8 per cent inflation, while the last quarter recorded 10.1 per cent inflation,” Prof. Annim said.
On the regional inflation rates, Prof. Annim said the overall year-on-year inflation ranged between 2.1 per cent and 16.3 per cent.
He said the Upper West recorded the lowest inflation rate of 2.1 per cent while the Accra had the highest inflation rate of 16.3 per cent.
“With the exception of the Upper West Region (-0.4 per cent food inflation and 4.6 per cent non-food inflation), all regions recorded higher food inflation than non-food inflation,” he said.
Prof. Annim stated that local inflation for local goods increased from 11.5 per cent in November to 12 per cent in December, while inflation for imported goods rose from 5.6 per cent in November to 6.1 per cent in December.
BY FRANCIS NTOW AND CHRIS YAW NTENYINBU
