Producer Price Index up by 7.7% in January

Producer Price Index is the system that measures the average change over time in the prices received by domestic producers for the production of their goods and services over a period.

Briefing the press yesterday in Accra, Mr Baah Wadieh, Acting Government Statistician of the Ghana Statistical Service, explained that the Producer Price for January 2018 increased by 7.7%

According to him, the rate represents a 1.0 percentage point increase in producer inflation relative to the rate recorded in December 2017 (8.7%).

“The month-on-month change in producer price index between December 2017 and January 2018 was 1.2 %,” he said.

The Statistician said the producer price inflation in the mining and quarrying sub-sector decreased by 0.8 percentage point over the December 2017 rate of 19.1 % to record 18.3%in January 2018.

He said “the producer inflation for manufacturing which constitutes more than two-thirds of total industry decreased by 1.3 percentage points, to record 7.3 %. The utilities sub-sector recorded an inflation rate of 0.2% in January 2018 indicating a decrease of 0.2 percentage point relative to the rate recorded in December 2017.”

For manufacturing, the Statistician said during the month of January 2018, six out of the sixteen major groups in the manufacturing sub-sector recorded inflation rates higher than the sector average of 7.3 %.

“Manufacture of refined petroleum products recorded the highest inflation rate of 29.0% while manufacturing of food products and beverages recorded the lowest producer price inflation rate of -3.1%,” he explained.