Food contributed 59.1 percent to total inflation in December last year – GSS

Food contributed 59.1% to the total inflation in December 2020, The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has announced.

The GSS said on Wednesday, January 13 that this is the highest contribution recorded since April 2020 when COVID-19 started to affect Ghana.

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.

Within the Food Division, Vegetables (24.2%) was the Subclass with the highest rate of inflation, followed by Fish and other Seafood (22.9%).

Overall month-on-month Food inflation was 1.5% (1.2 percentage point higher than last month and higher than both on average in 2020 and in the same month last year).

Similar to Food, Alcoholic Beverages and Tabacco saw a relatively high month-on-month inflation (0.9%). In contrast to Food inflation, Non-Food inflation decreased, from to 7.7% this month as compared to 8.3% last month and 8.5% on average in 2020. Month-on-month Non-Food inflation was 0.4%.

After a few months of high inflation for Transport, December saw low inflation for Transport (4.8% year-on-year and 0.1% month-on-month as compared to an average 7.8% year-on-year and 0.4% month-on-month for 2020)

Compared to both the average month-on-month inflation for different Divisions in the regions on average over the year 2020 and to the same month-on-month inflation indicators for December 2019, December 2020 recorded comparatively high inflation numbers.

The nation inflation rate for December 2020 was 10.4 percent.