PThe country’s year-on-year producer price inflation rate for September fell to 9.7 per cent from 10.2 per cent in August, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has announced.
This represents a 0.5 percentage point decrease in producer inflation relative to the rate recorded in the August 2019 and a month-on-month change rate of 0.1 per cent between August and September.
Announcing the August producer price inflation at a news conference in Accra yesterday, the Acting Deputy Government Statistician in charge of services, Mr David Y. Kombat said the drop in the producer price inflation for September was influenced by the drop in the producer price inflation in the manufacturing sub-sector.
He said the producer price inflation rate for the manufacturing sub-sector fell from 5.8 per cent in August 2019 to 4.9 per cent in September 2019, the lowest among the other subs-sectors of mining and quarrying and utilities.
“The price drivers for the fall in the producer price inflation for the manufacturing sub-sector was as a result of decreases in the inflation rate of manufacture of refined petroleum products and manufacture of food and food products,” Mr Kombat said.
The inflation rate for the manufacture of refined petroleum products fell from 3.1 per cent in August 2019 to 0.7 per cent in September 2019 and the inflation of the manufacture of food and food products fell from 6.7 per cent in August 2019 to 6.1 per cent in September 2019.
Mr Kombat stated that the producer price inflation for the mining and quarrying sub-sector increased by 0.6 per cent to 37.1 per cent in September 2019 from 36.5 per cent in August 2019, the highest among the three sub-sectors.
The Deputy Government Statistician in charge of Services said the utilities sub-sector recorded a 0.1 percentage points increase over the August 2019 rate of 6.8 per cent.
“With respect to the monthly changes, mining and quarrying recorded the highest inflation rate of 1.9 per cent, followed by utilities sub-sector which recorded no inflation rate. The manufacturing sub-sector recorded the lowest inflation of -0.3 per cent,” he said.
Highlighting on the petroleum price index, Mr Kombat said the producer price inflation rate for the sector fell from 3.1 in August 2019 to 0.7 per cent in September 2019, the lowest in 12 months.
He said the producer price inflation for petroleum in the same period last year stood at 31.1 per cent.
The Producer Price Index measures the average change over time in the prices received by the domestic producers for the production of their goods and services.
By Kingsley Asare
