Significant increases in prices of transport and food pushed Ghana’s headline inflation rate to 31.7 percent in the month of July 2022.
This represents a 1.9 percentage point increase over the 29.8 percent rate recorded in June 2022.
On a monthly basis, inflation between June 2022 and July 2022 was 3.1%.
This was captured in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) on Wednesday, August 10, 2022.
According to the data, food inflation rose again to 32.3% while non-food inflation was 31.3 percent.
Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Annim highlighted the impact of the key drivers on the increase in the overall inflation rate for July 2022.
“We composed this from two perspectives, the food and non-food inflation and from a domestic and imported perspective. From the food and non-food inflation, we recorded food inflation of 32.3% and 31.3% for non-food inflation.”
“From the domestic perspective, we recorded 29.2% and imported inflation of 31.3%.”
He further indicated that Eastern Region recorded the highest inflation rate of 38.1% whereas the Upper East Region recorded the lowest inflation rate of 19.8%.
This is coming at a time when Ghana’s Long-Term Foreign Currency Issuer Default Rating has been downgraded to ‘CCC’ from ‘B-‘ by Fitch Ratings.
The downgrade, Fitch Ratings noted, was because of the deterioration of Ghana’s public finances, which has contributed to a prolonged lack of access to Eurobond markets, in turn leading to a significant decline in external liquidity.
“In the absence of new external financing sources, international reserves will fall close to two months of current external payments (debits in the current account) by end-2022”,it explained further.
Meanwhile, Economist, Professor Godfred Bokpin, has urged President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to reduce the size of his government and check corruption, which are two of the sure ways to bring the economy back on its feet.
