Gov’t Misses 8.5 Percent Inflation Target

By:Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh

Email:ankiilu@yahoo.com

 

Figures from the Ghana Statistics Service (GSS) indicate that the government of the West African second largest economy slightly missed its 8.5 percent year-end inflation target.

Ghana’s economy ended the year with an inflation rate of 8.8 percent. This is slightly higher than what the Mills/Amissah-Arthur/Mahama government set out to achieve for last year.

This is about 0.3 percentage points higher than government’s target. However, the December 2012 figure depicted a marginal drop compared to the 9.3 recorded for November, same year.

This implies that even though price levels of goods and services generally went up in December, last year the rate of increase was marginal compared to the month of November.

Ghana’s Acting Government Statistician, Philomena Nyarko attributed the drop of the inflation to the stability of the Ghanaian Cedi against the foreign currencies such as the US Dollar, Euro and the Pound Sterling.
She added: “We think that it is the stability in the exchange rate, we didn’t see any changes in petroleum prices and utility prices; so usually those are the things that really account for the change because it reflects in transportation and so on and so forth.”

Mrs Nyarko told journalists in Accra yesterday that on regional basis, Greater Accra recorded the highest inflation figure of 11.2 percent in the month of December, 2012.

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