The year-on-year inflation rate fell for the second month in a row at 7.5% in May from 8.5% the previous month on lower food inflation.
Month-on-month inflation between April and May 2021 was 0.8%, which was 0.7 percentage point lower than what was recorded in April.
“One year ago, in May 2020 we observed a peak in inflation at 11.3%. Because such a peak did not occur this year, year-on-year inflation is relatively low this month,” Professor Kobina Annim, Government Statistician said on Wednesday (9 June).
He said the month’s food inflation, which stood at 5.4% was both lower than last month’s 6.5% and the average of the previous 12 months (11.3 %).
“This further leads to food inflation decreasing in its contribution to total inflation to 32.3%, the lowest contribution observed since the CPI basket was rebased in 2018,” he said.
Overall month-on-month food inflation was 1.3%, which is above the average month-on-month inflation.
The low food inflation was driven by negative inflation for vegetables at 3.5%.
All non-food divisions recorded positive month-on-month inflation of maximum 1.4%. Like food inflation, non-food year-on-year inflation on average went down this month compared to last month from 8.8 per cent to 10.0%.
Out of the 13 divisions, 10 had lower or equal year-on-year inflation in May 2021 than the rolling average over the last 12 months.
“Transport is the non-food division that recorded the biggest difference compared to the 12-month average of 11.7% compared to 7.6%).
“This Transport inflation is driven by the inflation of Diesel (37.7% year-on-year and 10.0% month-on-month) and Petrol (34.0% year-on-year and 8.0% month-on-month).
This relatively high transport inflation leads the Transport Division to contribute 16.5% to total inflation, the highest percentage since October 2019,” Prof. Annim said.
The inflation for imported goods was 7.3% down from 7.4% last month, while the inflation for locally produced items was also 7.3% on average down from the 8.7 per cent recorded last month.
Regional breakdown
At the regional level, the overall year-on-year inflation ranged from 2.6% in Western Region to 12.3% in Greater Accra Region.
Upper West Region recorded the highest month-on-month inflation of 4.3%.
Three regions saw a stark decline in Food inflation as compared to last month. Western Region went from 6.5% to 0.4%, Eastern from 8.2% to 4.3%, and Ashanti from 9.8% to 5.9%.
On the other hand, Volta Region saw an increase in food inflation from 5.6% to 9.8%.
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