The country’s annual inflation eased marginally to 10.1 per cent in October from 10.4 per cent in September.
This represents a year-on-year change rate of 0.3 per cent and a month-on-month change rate of 0.2 per cent.
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 per cent.
“This higher inflation rate for food translates into food having a higher contribution to overall inflation. Food contributed 54.7 per cent 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 per cent, 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 per cent.
The Government Statistician indicated that inflation for imported good stood at 5.1 per cent while the inflation of local goods was 12.2 per cent, with a difference of 7.1 per cent.
On regional inflation, Prof Annim said the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 1.6 per cent in the Upper West Region to 15.2 per cent in Greater Accra.
“In Greater Accra the difference between food (14.0 per cent) and Non-food inflation (16.0) was just two percentage points, while in Ashanti Region this difference was 13 percentage points (17.6 per cent compared to 4.6 per cent). On a month-on-months basis Northern Region recorded the highest inflation (11. Per cent) and Upper West the lowest (-2.4 per cent),” he said.
He said on the average, rural areas showed a higher month-on-month (0.3 per cent) but lower year-on-year inflation (8.8 per cent) than urban areas 90.2 per cent month-on-month and 10.5 per cent year-on-year).
By Kingsley Asare
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