Dr. Philomena Nyarko
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has postponed the announcement of the country’s rebased inflation figures for the third time in a row.
Initially billed for March this year, the rebasing of the inflation figures was deferred on two occasions due to problems with computing data gathered from the field.
Dr Philomena Nyarko, Acting Government Statistician, who disclosed the information to journalists in Accra, said the delay in releasing the new figures was to ensure reliability and uniformity.
“We have done all the calculations; we have entered the data and created our indices but normally you know, when you do such statistical work, you have to validate the results and so while we were validating the results we realized that one data point was out of range.
“And when this happens, you need to explore and find explanations to the result that you have seen. So we need time to go into the database to find out what is contributing to this extraordinary data point. So once that is done, we will come out finally to tell you what the figures are,” she explained.
She said the announcement of the rebased figures would be made public next Wednesday including those of the quarterly Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures and the Producer Price Index (PPI) quarterly figures.
“I want to assure our users and the general public that come Wednesday the data would be released.”
The new basket of goods and services which has now been increased from 267 to 242 items should cover inflation for the month of June.
A business desk report