Producer Price Inflation falls to 39.6% yr/yr in Oct

Ghana's annual Producer Price Inflation (PPI) fell to 39.6 percent in October, down from a revised figure of 47 percent year-on-year in September, the national statistics office said on Wednesday.

The figure is an indication of the fiscal challenges facing the West African country, whose gross domestic product is forecast to fall to 3.9 percent in 2015 after years of rapid expansion through its exports of gold, cocoa and oil.

The drop is influenced by a decline in utility prices and the recent stability of the cedi currency, government statistician Philomena Nyarko told a news conference.

"The mining and quarrying subsector recorded the highest year-on-year producer price inflation of 48.7 pct," she said.

Producer price inflation is an advance indicator of consumer price inflation. Ghana's PPI rose steadily through most of this year before starting to fall in the third quarter.

Ghana's annual consumer price inflation rose to 16.9 percent in October from 16.5 percent the previous month.

The government hopes to seal a deal soon with the International Monetary Fund for financial assistance to help an economy struggling with rising consumer price inflation, a high budget deficit and a currency that has fallen sharply this year before rebounding partially.