base rate

PPI drops to 4.8% in April

Ghana’s producer price inflation for April this year recorded 4.8 percent.

This is down from the 6 percent recorded in March this year.

This means that the cost of production for industries has seen some stability during the period.

The difference between the producer price inflation between March and April this year was negative 1.3 percent.

The Acting Government Statistician, Baah Wadieh who made the announcement attributed the development to the relative stability of the cedi.

Year on year changes

In April 2016, the producer price inflation rate for all industry was 11.2 percent.

The rate decreased to 11.0 percent in May 2016 and decreased further to record 7.6 percent in June 2016.

It increased to 10.4 percent in July, 2016 and then to 11.1 percent in August 2016.

The rate declined in September 2016 to record 9.7 percent but increased marginally to 9.8 percent in October 2016.

It increased further to 11.9 percent in November 2016 but declined to 4.8 percent in December 2016 and then to 3.1 percent in January 2017.

In February 2017, the rate increased to 5.4 percent and then to 6.0 percent in March 2017 but declined to 4.8 percent in April 2017.

Manufacturing Sector

During the month of April 2017, nine out of the sixteen major groups in the manufacturing sub-sector recorded inflation rates higher than the sector average of 2.9 percent.

Tanning and dressing of leather recorded the highest inflation rate of 20.8 percent while manufacturing of paper and paper products recorded the lowest producer price inflation rate of -5.3%.