Headline inflation for the month of November, 2020, is 9.8 per cent.

This represents a fall in inflation for the fourth consecutive time since July this year when year-on-year inflation stood at 11.4 per cent.

Ghana begun 2020 with a single inflation digit of 7.8 per cent.

The new inflation figure released by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), is 0.3 percentage points lower than last month’s inflation rate of 10.1 per cent, representing a month-on-month inflation of 0.3 per cent between October 2020 and November 2020.

“For the first time, since the Covid-19 pandemic, year-on-year inflation has gone below 10 per cent,” said Government’s statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim.

Food and non-food inflation

Food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation was 11.7 per cent and average non-food inflation 8.3 per cent.

Food contributed 53.0% to the total inflation and thus is still the predominant driver of year-on-year inflation.

Within the food Division, fruits and nuts (21.7%) was the Subclass with the highest rates of inflation followed by vegetables(19.5%).

Overall month-on-month Food inflation was 0.3%, with negative (1.6%) inflation for the Fruits and Nuts Subclass.

Non-Food inflation, in contrast to food inflation, did not change compared to last month. Year-on-year Non-Food inflation came in again at 8.3 per cent, the lowest rate since April 2020.

Month-on-month Non-Food inflation also remained stable at 0.3 per cent.

The ‘Housing, Water, Electricity, and Gas’ division contributed 22.6 per cent to the total inflation.

Most of this increase can be attributed to increased rents and refuse disposal.

Month-on-month inflation for the ‘Housing, Water, Electricity, and Gas’ division was 0.9 per cent.

Regional Inflation

Overall year-on-year inflation at the regional level, ranged from 3.4 per cent in the Upper West and Volta Regions to 15.2 per cent in Greater Accra Region.

The Greater Accra Region is the only Region that recorded a food inflation rate over 8 per-cent (13.7%).

In GreaterAccra the difference between Food(13.7%) and Non-Food (16.2%) inflation was 2.5 percentage points, while in the Ashanti Region, the difference was 9.4 percentage points(5.7% compared to 15.1%).

The Upper West Region was the only region where Non-Food inflation was higer than Food inflation.

On a month-on-month basis, the Upper West Region recorded the highest inflation (2.3%) and Central Region the lowest (-0.7%).

Imported and local inflation

Inflation of imported goods was 5.6 per cent, whereas inflation of local goods was11.5 per cent on average.

Month-on-month inflation for both imported goods and local goods was 0.4 per cent.

The main contributor to local month-on-month inflation was the reduction of prices of locally produced Food items.

Splitting locally produced items between food and non-food items, food items had an average year-on-year inflation of 12.0 per cent and non-food items an inflation rate of9.2 per cent.

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