Inflation up by 0.3%

Story: Boahene Asamoah

THE Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the annual rate of changes in the prices of goods and services in the country, for the month of August this year, inched up by 0.3 per cent to 10.4 per cent, from the previous month’s figure of 10.1 per cent.
Announcing the figures at the press conference yesterday, the Deputy Government Statistician, Prof. Nicholas N.N. Nsowah-Nuamah, said the non-food group contributed to the upward increase of the CPI by 0.47 points.
The rate showed signs of easing off after dropping to 10.7 per cent in June from 11 per cent recorded in May. In the month of April the rate stood at 10.5 per cent
Earlier in the year the rate had fallen from 10.9 to 10.4 per cent between January and February 2007.
Prof Nsowah-Nuamah said under the non-food group, transportation contributed the highest of the CPI, with a gain of 0.21 points, and pointed out that the food and beverages group contributed negatively to the change.
In July, the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) announced an increase in the petroleum. Anaylsts believe that the upward move in the petroleum prices might have caused the increase in transportation.
Prof Nsowah-Nuamah said the health group under the non-food component also increased by 0.06 points, while housing, water, electricity, gas and other utilities accounted for 0.05 points increase.
He said within the food and beverages group, fish recorded the highest downward movement of negative 0.16 points to the change in the national index with smoked herrings, ‘kpala’ and dried fish contributing negatives of 0.17 points, 0.02 points and 0.01 points respectively.
The Ghana Statistical Service has re-based the CPI year to 2002 from the old base year of 1997, starting from January this year.
The new base year featured a number of changes as compared to the old one, which included the updates in the weights of the consumption basket from the 1991/1992 Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS) expenditure levels to the 1989/1999 GLSS expenditure levels”.
Additionally, the presentation of the CPI had been expanded to include indices on the 10 regions of the country.