Producer Price Inflation up in Nov

Ghana cedis

Producer Price Inflation (PPI) for the month of November 2016 increased marginally to 11.9 per cent from the 9.7 per cent recorded in October. This represents a 2.2 per cent increase over the period.

The PPI measures the average change over time in the prices received by domestic producers for the production of their goods and services.

At a press conference in Accra on Wednesday, the acting Government Statistician, Mr Baah Wadieh, attributed the increase to the mining and quarrying, manufacturing and utilities sub-sectors.

He said the utilities sub-sector recorded the highest year-on-year inflation of 38.3 per cent, followed by the mining and quarrying sub-sector with 19.4 per cent. The manufacturing sub-sector recorded the lowest year-on-year inflation rate of 4.9 per cent for the period under review.

Monthly changes

With respect to the monthly changes, Mr Wadieh said the manufacturing sub-sector recorded the highest rate of 2.1 per cent, followed by the utilities sub-sector with 0.1 per cent. The mining and quarrying sub-sector recorded the lowest rate of -1.6 per cent.

The monthly change rate for the mining and quarrying sub-sector increased by 4.7 percentage points in November 2016 relative to the rate recorded in October 2016 (14.7 per cent).

Meanwhile, the monthly change rate for the manufacturing sub-sector for the month of November was 1.9 percentage points higher than that of October 2016 (3.0 per cent), whereas that of utilities for November 2016 was 0.1 percentage points higher as compared to that of October 2016 (38.2 per cent).

Trends

In September 2015, the PPI rate for all industries recorded 4.8 per cent but declined to record 2.9 per cent in October 2015. In November 2015, it inched up slightly to record 3.0 per cent and then increased further to 11.0 per cent in December 2015 and to 16.3 per cent in January 2016.

In February 2016, the rate decreased to 14.5 per cent and continued its downward trend to record 11.2 per cent in April 2016. In June 2016, it dropped further to 7.6 per cent but increased to 10.4 per cent in July 2016, and then to 11.1 per cent in August 2016, and further declined in September 2016 to record 9.7 per cent.

Petroleum price index

The inflation rate in the petroleum sub-sector was -27.9 per cent in September 2015. The rate declined to record -34.5 per cent in October 2015.

It, however, increased to -21.8 per cent in December 2015 and rose further to record 3.3 per cent in January 2016. In February 2016, it declined to 0.5 per cent but increased to 2.9 per cent in March 2016 as a result of the base drift effect.

The rate increased again to 6.5 per cent in April 2016, but declined slightly to 6.1 per cent in May 2016. In June 2016, the rate decreased to -4.7 per cent and then to -19.3 per cent in July 2016 but increased to -16.3 per cent in August 2016, and further to -14.8 per cent in September 2016. In October 2016, the rate declined downwards to -7.4 per cent, and drastically to -0.2 per cent for November 2016.

Source: GraphicOnline