Headline inflation hits 31.7% as Fitch projects end of year inflation of 22%
Credit rating agency, Fitch Ratings, has projected Ghana’s headline inflation rate to end the year at 22 percentage points.
This, according to the agency, is due to the fact that it expects the country’s upward-trending inflation rate to peak in the third quarter of 2022 before slowing through to the end of the year.
For the subsequent year – 2023 – Fitch projected a further decline in inflation rate to 16% at end-2023.
“We forecast annual average inflation of 22% in 2022, slowing to 16% in 2023,” said Fitch in its recent downgrading of the country’s creditworthiness from ‘B-‘ to ‘CCC’.
The projection by Fitch comes after the country recorded its highest inflation rate of 31.7% in the month of July in over two decades.
Inflation rises to 31.7% for end-July 2022
Headline inflation for the month of July 2022 rose to 31.7%. This is some 1.9 percentage points higher than the recorded 29.8% in June 2022.
This means that in the month of July 2022 the general price level was 31.7% higher than in July 2021.
Government Statistician, Prof Samuel Kobina Annim, said the inflation rate for July was mainly driven by transport and utilities.
According to the GSS, the rise in inflation was due to increments in Transport (44.6%); Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels (43.0%); Furnishings, Household Equipment and Routine Household Maintenance (42.0%); Recreation, Sport and Culture (33.8%); Personal Care, Social Protection and Miscellaneous Goods and Services (33.7%) and Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages (32.3%).
Food inflation went up to 32.3% in July 2022, from 30.7% in June 2022.
Again, non-food inflation also shot up to 31.3% in July 2022, from 29.1% the previous month.
Similarly, inflation for locally produced items was 30.9%, whereas inflation for imported items was 33.9%.
For the food group, Oils and Fats (67%); Fish and Other Seafood (42.9%); Water (42.4%); Cereal Products (40.0%); Milk, Dairy Products and Eggs (39.7%); Fruit and Vegetable Juices (37.7%); Live Animals and Meat (34.5%) and Sugar and Desserts (32.7%) recorded inflation rates higher than the food inflation rate of 32.3%.
For the month-on-month, the inflation rate between June 2022 and July 2022 was 3.1%.
Regional inflation
Eastern region recorded the highest inflation rate of 38.1%, followed by Western and Greater Accra with inflation rates of 37.6% and 35.5% respectively.
The Upper East region registered the lowest inflation rate of 19.8%.
The region with the lowest inflation rate was Upper East (15.7%), whilst Upper West recorded the least inflation rate of 21.2% for the non-food group.
