Mining, manufacturing push producer inflation down

Producer prices in the country for September 2016 have seen a decrease as the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has announced that the Producer Price Index (PPI) has declined to 9.7percent from 11.2percent recorded in August.

This means that, on an annual basis, between September 2015 and September 2016, the PPI increased by 9.7 percent.

However, the month-on-month change rate in the PPI between August and September 2016 was 0.8percent.

According the Deputy Government Statistician, Mr. Baah Wadieh, the decrease in the annual PPI can be mainly attributed to the decline in rates recorded in the manufacturing, and the mining and quarrying sub-sectors of the economy.

“With regard to manufacturing, the decrease is mainly the result of reduction in the rate of chemical and chemical products. The PPI for chemical and chemical products decreased from 28.7percent in August to 5.2 percent in September 2016. This is mainly due to base drift effect.

For mining and quarrying, it decreased from 28.4percent in August to 22.2percent in September 2016. This is due to decrease in price of gold on the global market and base drift effect,” Mr. Wadieh said at the press briefing.

Even though the manufacturing sub-sector saw a dip in its inflation rate, thirteen out of the sixteen major groups in the sub-sector recorded inflation rates higher than its average of 1.3 percent.

Manufacture of wood and wood products, and cork recorded the highest inflation rate of 58.1percent, while, manufacture of coke, refined petroleum products and nuclear fuel recorded the lowest PPI rate of -14.8percent.

The Utility sub-sector, however, did not experience any decline, as there was an increase in the its inflation rate of 36 percent recorded in August 2016 to 38.2percent in September 2016, indicating an increase of 2.2percentage points over the period.

Inflation rate in the petroleum sub-sector also increased from the -16.3percent in August 2016 to -14.8 percent in September.

With respect to the monthly changes, the manufacturing sub-sector recorded the highest rate of 0.9percent, followed by the Utilities sub-sector with 0.7percent; and the mining and quarrying sub-sector recorded the lowest rate of 0.4percent.