Ghana's inflation goes up

The headline year-on-year consumer inflation rate again went up slightly to 10.6 percent in Ghana in April, compared with the previous month's 10.4 percent, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) announced here.

The monthly change rate for the period from March to April 2013 was 1.8 percent, compared with the 1.7 percent recorded for the period from February to March, Acting Deputy Government Statistician Baah Wadieh told the media Wednesday.

Annual inflation for the food and non-alcoholic beverage sector recorded an average inflation rate of 6.4 percent, with Inflation rate for local food products at 6.0 percent, about one-and-a-half times lower than that of imported food products which recorded a rate of 9.0 percent, reported Xinhua.

The year-on-year non-food inflation rate was about two times higher than that of food at 13.0 percent, with six sub-groups recording inflation rates higher than the group average.

With regard to regional inflation, the Greater Accra Region recorded the highest inflation rate of 12.6 percent and the western region the lowest (8.5 percent).

Kofi Agyemang Duah, acting deputy of Government Statistician, said the rise in inflation rate for April was both as a result of the depreciation of the local Cedi currency as well as historical factors.

"It is firstly due to the cedi depreciation as the local currency depreciated 1.4 percent against the US dollar in the month of April," he observed, adding that this affected the prices of imported items in both food and non-food groups in the inflation basket.

He added that there were also seasonal factors stemming from the fact that April was the peak of the planting season when most farmers would have finished planting and waiting for harvest, thereby making food scarce.