Business News of Thursday, 28 January 2016

Source: GNA

Producer price inflation rises to 10.5% in December

Dr Philomena Nyarko, Gov't Statistician Dr Philomena Nyarko, Gov't Statistician

The year-on-year inflation from the Producer Price Index (PPI) for all industry rose to 10.5 per cent in December 2015, up by 7.5 percentage points.

It rose from the 3.0 per cent recorded in November on the back of high utility tariffs.

Dr Philomena Nyarko, Government Statistician, told a news conference on Wednesday that the utilities sub-sector recorded an inflation rate of 56.6 per cent in December 2015, indicating an increase of 51.3 percentage points over November 2015 rate of 5.3 per cent.

The monthly change in the producer price index from November to December was 6.2 per cent.

The mining and quarrying sub-sector fell 2.5 percentage points over the November 2015 rate of 7.3 per cent, to record 4.8 per cent in December 2015.

Manufacturing, which constitutes more than two-thirds of total industry, increased by 1.8 percentage points to record 3.5 per cent.

With respect to the monthly changes, utilities sub-sector recorded the highest inflation rate of 48.8 per cent, followed by the manufacturing sub-sector with negative 0.3 per cent.

The mining and quarrying recorded the lowest rate of negative 1.4 per cent.