Headline inflation for the month of January 2021 is 9.9%
The recorded rate for the month of January represents a 0.5 percentage points decline in comparison to December 2020 recorded inflation rate of 10.4%.
Month-on-month inflation between December 2020 and January 2021, notes the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) was 0.9%.
Housing, water, electricity, gas – 19.0% down from 20.1% in December 2020 – and food and non-alcoholic beverages – 12.8% down from 14.1% last month – recorded the highest rates of inflation.
Food and non-food inflation
Food inflation (12.8%) came down compared to last month (14.1%), but is still slightly above the average over the last 12 months (12.3%). With this rate, food contributed 57.0% to the total inflation.
This is still above the average for the last year and a half, but slightly down from last month (59.1%). Within the food division, vegetables (20.3%) was the subclass with the highest rate of inflation, which is lower than December (24.2%).
Food inflation was 1.2% (0.3 percentage point lower than last month, but higher than the average over the last 12 months). Compared to last December 2020, fruits and nuts (-5.1%) saw a decrease in price levels, as did fish and other seafood (-0.2%).
Similar to last month, Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco saw a relatively high month-on-month inflation (1.4%).
Non-Food year-on-year inflation on average was the same as last month (7.7%), which is below the 2020 average (8.5%). Out of the 13 divisions, five had higher year-on-year inflation in January 2021 than the rolling average over the last 12 months.
The biggest difference between the average and the current month were recorded for Housing (2.1 percentage points) and Education services (minus 4.1 percentage points). Average month-on-month non-food inflation was 0.7%.
For month-on-month inflation, eight divisions recorded higher inflation than the 12- month rolling average. At the regional level, a similar trend exists.
Regional inflation breakdown
At the regional level, the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 1.9% in Upper West Region to 15.1% in Greater Accra Region. Only in the Upper West Region (-0.6% food inflation and 4.5% non-food inflation), did food outpace non-food inflation.
The largest difference in food and non-food inflation was recorded in Eastern Region (12.8% and 2.6% respectively). Overall, year-on-year inflation came down in six regions compared to last month, with the biggest decrease in Central Region (minus 1.8 percentage points) and the largest increase in Ashanti Region (0.9 percentage points).
However, Ashanti recorded higher month-on-month inflation for 12 divisions in January compared to the 12-month average and Greater Accra recorded the lower inflation for 11 out of 13.
On a month-on-month basis, Ashanti Region recorded the highest overall inflation (2.1%) and food inflation (3.0%) and Greater Accra had the lowest (0.2% overall and 0.0% food inflation).
