October inflation drops marginally to 10.1 percent

The country’s annual inflation eased marginally to 10.1 percent in October from 10.4 percent in September.

This represents a year-on-year change rate of 0.3 percent and a month-on-month change rate of 0.2 percent.

The Government Statistician, Professor Samuel K. Annim who disclosed this in Accra on Wednesday when he presented the Consumer Price Index and inflation rate for October, 2020, attributed fall in inflation rate to food inflation.

He said the food and non-alcoholic beverages in the period under review recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 12.6 percent.

“This higher inflation rate for food translates into food having a higher contribution to overall inflation. Food contributed 54.7 percent to the total inflation and thus is still the predominant driver of year-on-year inflation,” Prof. Annim said.

He said vegetables within the food subclass recorded the highest inflation rate of 24.9 percent, saying “this high inflation for vegetables is explained by the relatively low index for vegetables back in October 2019.”

Prof. Annim however, said the non-food inflation stood at 8.3 per cent, the lowest since April, 2020.

Within the Non-food inflation sector, he said housing, water, electricity and gas, recorded inflation of 20.2, above the sector average of 8.3 percent.

The Government Statistician indicated that inflation for imported good stood at 5.1 percent while the inflation of local goods was 12.2 percent, with a difference of 7.1 percent.

On regional inflation, Prof Annim said the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 1.6 percent in the Upper West Region to 15.2 percent in Greater Accra.

“In Greater Accra the difference between food (14.0 percent) and Non-food inflation (16.0) was just two percentage points, while in Ashanti Region this difference was 13 percentage points (17.6 percent compared to 4.6 percent). On a month-on-months basis Northern Region recorded the highest inflation (11. Per cent) and Upper West the lowest (-2.4 percent),” he said.

He said on the average, rural areas showed a higher month-on-month (0.3 percent) but lower year-on-year inflation (8.8 percent) than urban areas 90.2 percent month-on-month and 10.5 percent year-on-year).