Producer Inflation inshes to 19.59%

FIRMING prices of gold and other related goods and services within the country’s mining and quarrying sector last September helped push the Ghana Statistical Services’ (GSS) producer price index (PPI) upward from 2.34 per cent to 19.59 per cent in the month under review.



The current September rate of 19.59 (year-on-year) is the third consecutive rise in the PPI for this year after it had briefly resumed a declining trend in June. PPI for year-on-year measures the rate at which shop floor prices of goods and services in the country change over a one year period.

Mrs Philomena Nyarko, the Deputy Government Statistician who announced the September 2011 PPI in Accra noted that the month-on-month rate, however, declined to 2.12 per cent after increasing by 2.37 per cent in August this year.

She said the mining and quarrying sector recorded the highest rate of 50.74 per cent in September, indicating a 3.81 per cent jump from the August rate of 46.93 per cent followed by the manufacturing sector’s 16.52 per cent rate.

The utilities sector, she said witnessed the least increase in prices having recorded a September PPI of 7.67 per cent.

Year-on-year inflation from the producer’s perspective has over the past 12 months been ranging between 24.29 per cent (the highest in the 12-month period) and 16.90 per cent (the lowest within the period).

The highest rate of 24.29 per cent over the 12 month period was recorded in April after which the figure resumed a mixed trend over the period under review.

On the effects of global oil price changes on the PPI basket particularly, now that the country has assumed the status of an oil producing nation, the Deputy Government Statistician explained that although the service had factored in price changes at that sub-sector into the PPI, “GSS was looking to restructure its PPI basket to capture the oil sub-sector under the mining and quarrying sector instead of its present location in the manufacturing sector.”