The Producer Price Inflation (PPI) rate increased by 0.6% to hit 7.4% in April 2020.

This rate indicates that between April 2019 and April 2020 (year-on-year), the PPI increased by 7.4%.

Inflation from the producer perspective also followed the Consumer Price Inflation (CPI), increasing significantly during the month of the partial lockdown.

According to figures from the Ghana Statistical Service, the month-on-month change in the PPI between March 2020 and April 2020 was 1.5%.

The PPI in the Mining and Quarrying sub-sector increased by 14.6 percentage points over the March 2020 rate of 23.7% to record 38.0% in April 2020.

The producer inflation for manufacturing, which constitutes more than two-thirds of the total industry, however, decreased by 1.6 percentage points to record 0.5%.

The utility sub-sector recorded an inflation rate of 12.1% for April 2020 indicating a decrease of 0.1 percentage point over the March 2020 rate of 12.2%.

For the monthly changes, the mining and quarrying sub-sector recorded the highest inflation rate of 8.9%, followed by manufacturing sub-sectors with 0.3%. The Utility sub-sector recorded the least inflation rate of 0.1%.

During April 2020, 15 out of the 16 major groups in the manufacturing sub-sector recorded inflation rates higher than the sector average of 0.5 per cent.

Manufacture of machinery and equipment recorded the highest inflation rate of 24.7%, while the Manufacture of coke, refined petroleum products and nuclear fuel recorded the least inflation rate of -15.3 per cent.

Trends

In April 2019, the producer price inflation rate for all industry was 7.1%. The rate declined to 6.7% in May 2019.

Since then, the rate increased consistently to record 10.2% in August 2019 but declined to 8.9% in October 2019.

The rate then increased again continuously to record 14.5% in January 2020 but declined to record 6.8% in March 2020.