Headline inflation for the month of September according to the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) is 10.6 percent.
The recorded inflation rate for the month of September is 0.9 percentage points higher than the previous month’s inflation rate of 9.7 percent.
The new inflation rate exceeds the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) upper target band of 10 percent despite the optimism expressed by the Governor of the Central Bank, Dr Ernest Addison that inflation will remain within the Bank’s target band of 6 to 10 percent for the remaining months of the year.
“We expect inflation to continue to remain within the target band although we have have had some base trade effects with regards to some of the recent tax and petroleum price adjustments, but inflation continue to be anchored in our single digits band,” stated the Governor at the Africa Debate Summit which he reiterated at the BoG’s 101th MPC press briefing on September 27, 2021.
The Governor made the assertion despite the recent upward trend in headline inflation rate from April this year when headline inflation stood at 8.5 percent from the 10.3 percent recorded in March.
The headline inflation reduced further to 7.5 percent at end-May 2021 but however, increased by 0.3 percentage points to 7.8 percent at end-June 2021.
Inflation since June has continued on an elevated path reaching 9.7 percent at end-August 2021, marginally below the Central Bank’s 10 percent upper end of the target band.
Inflation now 10.6%
Inflation for the month of September, the GSS notes was mainly driven by increments in fuel prices and transport.
According to the GSS, month-onmonth inflation between August and September 2021 was 0.6% (0.3 pecentage point higher than what was recorded in August 2021). ’Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and other Fuels’ (18.7% ) recorded the highest inflation for the inflation rates of all Divisions.
Food inflation (11.5%) was higher than last month (10.9%) and just above the average of the previous 12 months (10.4%). However, Food inflation contribution to
total inflation dropped from 50.2% last month to 48.6% in September.
Overall, month-on-month food inflation was 0.0%
.Non-Food year on year inflation on average went up this month compared to last month (from 8.7% to 9.9%). Out of the 13 Division, six had higher year-on-year inflation in September 2021 than the rolling average over the last 12 months.
Transport is the Division that recorded the biggest difference in this month’s inflation compared to the 12- month rolling average.(13.6% compared to 8.9%).
At the regional level, the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 2.7% in the Eastern Region to 16.8% in Upper West Region (See Figure 3 3). Volta Region recorded the highest month on month inflation (3.6%).
Five regions (Brong Agafo, Eastern, Greater Accra, Upper East and UpperWest) recorded negative month-on-month inflation rates.
