The new rate of inflation was up 2.8 percent as compared to 10.9 percent recorded in the same month which was not rebased.
The update of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) with 2012 as the base year for calculation covered 267 as compared to the 242 items in the previous basket.
According to the Acting Government Statistician, Dr Philomena Nyarko, revising the weights was in line with the current spending patterns of the population.
‘This is the fifth time that the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has rebased CPI in Ghana; the first one was done in 1963 and the last one was done in 2002; based on the Ghana Living Standards Survey 5, we realized that the time has come for us to change the basket; the new CPI is different from what we have been using until now in a number of ways.’
The 267 goods and services in the CPI basket were grouped according to the Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) recommended by ECOWAS.
Head of Industrial Statistics at the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), Toni Krakah explained that ‘if for instance you are taking the prices of food on the market, the impact in terms of inflation will not be as it was first, so it depends on the twelve groups that was given; for instance the composition of food in the basket is now about 43.6 percent and so the non-food will be 46.4 percent.’
Adding the differentiations and prices of food increases, we expect inflation to go up, Mr Tony Kraka added.
Meanwhile, the economy of Ghana grew in the first quarter of 2013 by 6.7 percent (year on year) as compared to 7.9 percent recorded in 2012.
On sector by sector basis, the services sector recorded the highest growth of 12.0 percent followed by the agricultural sector with 1.1 percent while industry showed a negative growth of 0.8 percent.
Tony Krakah said the rate indicates a steady economic growth in the country.
In a related development, Producer Price inflation for the month of May decreased to 8.6 percent, representing a decrease in producer inflation by 1.6 percentage points relative to the rate recorded in April 2013.
The manufacturing sub-sector recorded the highest year-on-year producer inflation rate of 13.2 percent followed by the utilities sub-sector, which was 0.9 percent.
Citifmonline