The Ghana Statistical Service says inflation for October dropped to 10.1%. This is a drop of 0.3% from the 10.4% recorded the previous month.
According to the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), a marginal decline in the rate of combined non-food inflation for the period contributed to the fall in inflation.
The food and non-alcoholic beverages division recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 12.6%. This is a 1.4 percentage point higher than in August 2020 (11.2%).
This higher inflation rate for food translates into food having a higher contribution to overall inflation.
Food contributed 54.7% to the total inflation and thus is still the predominant driver of year-on-year inflation. Within the food division, vegetables (24.9%) was the subclass with the highest rates of inflation.
This high inflation for vegetables is explained by the relatively low index for vegetables back in October 2019.
Compared to both September and November 2019, inflation for vegetables would be closer to the numbers reported in the last months of around 17%.
Consonant previous months, month-on-month inflation for vegetables was negative (- 1.6%).
Overall month-on-month food inflation was 1%.
In contrast to food inflation, non-food inflation decreased. Year-on-year non-food inflation came in at 8.3%, this is the lowest rate since April 2020.
Month-on-month non-food inflation was 0.3%. Three divisions had higher month-on-month inflation between September and October 2020 than on average was recorded for these divisions in the months before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The other ten divisions showed lower than average rates of month-on-month inflation.
Imported and local inflation
The inflation of imported goods was 5.1%, while the inflation of local goods was 12.2% on average.
The month-on-month inflation for imported goods was 0.8%, while month-on-month inflation for local goods was 0.1%.
Splitting locally produced items between food and non-food items, food items had average year-on-year inflation of 13.6% and non-food items an inflation rate of 9.6%.
The month-on-month inflation for locally produced Food Items was 0.0%, compared to 0.2% for locally produced non-food Items.
Imported food items had a month-on-month inflation rate of 1.9%, while Non-food imported items had an inflation rate of 0.3%.
Mixed regional profile
At the regional level, the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 1.6% in the Upper West Region to 15.2% in Greater Accra.
In Greater Accra, the difference between food (14.0%) and non-food inflation (16.0%) was just two percentage points, while in Ashanti Region this difference was 13 percentage points (17.6% compared to 4.6%).
On a month-on-month basis, Northern Region recorded the highest inflation (1.1%) and Upper West the lowest (-2.4%).
On average, rural areas showed a higher month-on-month (0.3%) but lower year-on-year inflation (8.8%) than urban areas (0.2% month-on-month and 10.5% year-on-year).
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