The Ghana Statistical Service on Wednesday announced an increased of the Producer Price Inflation (PPI) for December 2012, to 17.1 per cent, representing 1.3 percentage points compared to 15.8 per cent in November.

In December 2012, the PPI in the Mining and Quarrying subsector increased by 8.0 percentage points over the November 2012 rates of 19.6 per cent to record 27.6 per cent.

On the year-on-year inflation rate for the three sectors, the mining and quarrying sector recorded the highest inflation rate of 27.6, while the manufacturing sector recorded 19.3 per cent, with the utilities sector netting 15.1 per cent.

Mr Baah Wadieh, Acting Deputy Statistician, in charge of Technical Support, who released the figures at a press conference in Accra, said the month on month changes in producer prices from November 2012 and December 2012 was - 0.4 per cent.

He said the Manufacturing sector which constituted more than two-thirds of the total industry increased slightly to 19.3 per cent from a rate of 19.0 per cent in November 2012.

“During the last 12 months, the producer inflation in the petroleum sub-sector exhibited a downward trend.

The highest inflation rate in the sub-sector was recorded in December 2011 (25.8 per cent) and the lowest in May 2012 (16.0 per cent),” Mr Wadieh said.