Hopes of Ghana attaining single digit inflation moved farther away from reality as current figures released by the Ghana Statistical Services (GSS) indicated a marginal increase in Ghana’s annual inflation figures from 17.4 percent in November to 18.1 in December driven partly by a weaker cedi, which pushed up local prices for imported goods.

The country recorded the highest inflation figure in June when figures hit a record high of 18.4 percent year-on-year in June, way above the 2008 budget’s initial target range of 6-8 percent, as high world oil and food prices fed through into domestic price rises in the country. The lowest inflation was 12.81 percent recorded in January 2008.

The majority of the price increase, 10.5 percentage points, derived from non-food items, in particular household equipment and healthcare, while 7.6 points came from food, notably fish, bread and cereals, government statistician -Grace Bediako said.

She made reference to the depreciation of the cedi, which lost a quarter of its value against the dollar during 2008 as a major factor, which continues to spur on rising inflation.

‘The marginal increase is as a result of multiple effects, including the exchange rate of the cedi. The election activities also contributed indirectly, especially in the non-food sector,’ she said.

Meanwhile, the cedi continues to depreciate against most of the internationally traded currencies for the week. It depreciated against the US Dollar, the British Pound, the Euro and the Japanese Yen by 1.27%, 6.56%, 0.99% and 3.05% respectively.

“In these last few months we have seen the prices go up so we expect that unless something changes like a decline in the price of oil and others we would see some increases for the next few months, before the actual trend of coming down begins, government statistician -Grace Bediako added .

She stated that but for government’s mitigation measures in the wake of rising food and oil prices on the world market, Ghanaians would be contending with a higher inflation figures.