ACCRA: Ghana’s producer price inflation (PPI) fell to 14.3 percent year on year in March from an unrevised 14.5 percent the previous month, driven by a drop in utility prices, the statistics office said on Wednesday. Utility prices were down by 0.5 percentage points from February but inflation in the sector remained at 43.4 percent, deputy government statistician Baah Wadieh said.
The high rate for utilities reflects a big increase in water and electricity tariffs imposed by the government towards the end of last year to meet conditions of the country’s International Monetary Fund (IMF) aid programme and which have fed through to production costs in the wider economy. PPI is a major component of consumer inflation, which rose to 19.2 percent in March from 18.5 percent in February.
The decrease in the all-industry inflation rate to 14.3 percent in March was largely attributable to the utilities and mining and quarrying sectors, Wadieh told a news conference. Inflation, which for years has exceeded government targets, is one of the economic problems being addressed by the three-year IMF programme agreed a year ago. Ghana exports gold, cocoa and oil but its GDP growth has slowed sharply in the past two years, hit by a global slump in commodity prices and wider economic problems that are likely to be a key factor at a presidential election in November.
