February inflation remains unchanged at 7.8%
Inflation for the month of February was 7.8 per cent, same as the figure recorded in January this year, data from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has shown.
The rate of inflation, which started declining from December last year to a rate of 7.9 per cent, continued to go down further to 7.8 per cent in January this year.
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The rate of inflation as indicated by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), measures changes in the price of a fixed basket of goods and services purchased by households.
Announcing the rate at a news conference in Accra, the Deputy Government Statistician, Mr David Kombat, said “year-on-year inflation rate for February 2020 was 7.8 per cent. This means that in the month of February 2020, the general price level was 7.8 per cent higher than in February 2019.”
He said the February 2020 rate of 7.8 per cent was largely driven by the food inflation.
“Food and non-alcoholic beverages remain the main drivers of inflation. The contribution of housing (including water, electricity, gas, etc.) went down from 10.2 per cent to 8.5 per cent,” he said.
Main drivers
In the month of February, food inflation recorded a rate of 7.7 per cent and non-food inflation was 7.9 per cent.
The differential inflation rate between locally produced items (8.9%) and imported items (5.9%) was 2.9 percentage points
For the last four months, inflation for locally produced goods has been growing faster than inflation for imported goods.
Regional level
At the regional level, Mr Kombat noted that the year-on-year inflation rate ranged from 9.7 per cent for Greater Accra Region to 5.0 per cent in the Upper West Region.
“Four regions – Greater Accra, Volta, Western and Eastern recorded inflation rates above the national average of 7.8 per cent.
“Upper West Region had the lowest year-on-year inflation rate of 5.0 per cent,” he said.