Inflation rate for January 2021 drops to 9.9%

The national year-on-year inflation rate for January 2021 has dropped to 9.9%, which is 0.5 percentage point lower than last month.

The inflation rate for December 2020 was at 10.4%

The month-on-month inflation between December 2020 and January 2021 was 0.9%.

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Housing, water, electricity, gas (19.0% down from 20.1% last month) and food and non-alcoholic beverages (12.8% down from 14.1% last month) recorded the highest rates of inflation.

Food and non-food inflation

Food inflation (12.8%) came down compared to last month (14.1%), but is still slightly above the average over the last 12 months (12.3%). With this rate, food contributed 57.0% to the total inflation.

This is still above the average for the last year and a half, but slightly down from last month (59.1%). Within the food division, vegetables (20.3%) was the subclass with the highest rate of inflation, which is lower than December (24.2%).

Food inflation was 1.2% (0.3 percentage point lower than last month, but higher than the average over the last 12 months). Compared to last December 2020, fruits and nuts (-5.1%) saw a decrease in price levels, as did fish and other seafood (-0.2%).

Similar to last month, Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco saw a relatively high month-on-month inflation (1.4%).

Non-Food year-on-year inflation on average was the same as last month (7.7%), which is below the 2020 average (8.5%). Out of the 13 divisions, five had higher year-on-year inflation in January 2021 than the rolling average over the last 12 months.

The biggest difference between the average and the current month were recorded for Housing (2.1 percentage points) and Education services (minus 4.1 percentage points). Average month-on-month non-food inflation was 0.7%.

For month-on-month inflation, eight divisions recorded higher inflation than the 12- month rolling average. At the regional level, a similar trend exists.

Regional breakdown

At the regional level, the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 1.9% in Upper West Region to 15.1% in Greater Accra Region. Only in the Upper West Region (-0.6% food inflation and 4.5% non-food inflation), did food outpace non-food inflation.

The largest difference in food and non-food inflation was recorded in Eastern Region (12.8% and 2.6% respectively). Overall, year-on-year inflation came down in six regions compared to last month, with the biggest decrease in Central Region (minus 1.8 percentage points) and the largest increase in Ashanti Region (0.9 percentage points).

However, Ashanti recorded higher month-on-month inflation for 12 divisions in January compared to the 12-month average and Greater Accra recorded the lower inflation for 11 out of 13.

On a month-on-month basis, Ashanti Region recorded the highest overall inflation (2.1%) and food inflation (3.0%) and Greater Accra had the lowest (0.2% overall and 0.0% food inflation).

Imported and Local Inflation

The inflation of imported goods was 6.1% (same as last month), while the inflation of local goods was 11.3% on average (down from 12.1% last month).

Month-on-month inflation for imported goods was 0.7% and for locally produced goods 1.0%.

Source: Ghextractives.com