The Producer Price Inflation (PPI) for July inched up provisionally to 8.8 from 7.1 per cent in June, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has said.
This represents a monthly change rate of 1.9 and a yearly change rate of 1.1 per cent.
Deputy Government Statistician, David Yenukwa Kombat, who announced this at a news conference in Accra yesterday, attributed the increase in the year-on-year PPI rate for July to the hike in the inflation rate of mining and quarrying.
He said mining and quarrying recorded the highest inflation rate for July due to increases in gold prices during the period under review.
“The producer PPI rate for the mining and quarrying sector rose from 22.4 per cent in June to 27.6 per cent in July as result of increase in the price of gold on the world market,” Deputy Government Statistician said.
Mr Kombat explained that the PPI rate for the manufacturing sector, which constitutes more than two-thirds of total industry, edged up by 0.1 percentage points to record 5.4 per cent in July with a monthly change rate of 0.3 per cent.
He said seven of the sixteen major groups in the manufacturing sub-sector recorded inflation rates higher than the sector average of 5.4 per cent.
“Manufacture of machinery and equipment recorded the highest inflation rate of 24.7 per cent, while tanning and dressing of leather recorded inflation rate of 0.0 per cent,” Mr Kombat said.
The Deputy Government Statistician revealed that the utilities sub-sector recorded inflation rate of 6.9 per cent indicating an increase of 5.8 percentage point over the rate recorded in June 2019.
“With respect to the monthly changes, utilities recorded the highest inflation rate of 5.9 per cent, followed by Mining and Quarrying sub-sector with 4.8 per cent. The Manufacturing sub-sector recorded the lowest inflation rate of 0.3 per cent,” Mr Kombat said.
Touching on the petroleum sub-sector, he said the PPI rate for the sector in July rose to 2.1 from 1.2 per cent in June.
Mr Kombat explained that the jump in the PPI rate for petroleum is as a result of the increase in the price of petroleum products.
By Kingsley Asare
