Ghana's inflation rises to 16.5% in September

Philomena Nyarko.
Ghana's inflation rose to a record 16.5 percent in September as against 15.9 percent the preceding month, the Ghana Statistical Service has announced.

The rate is the highest in four years.
According to the government statistician Philomena Nyarko, the increase was driven by non-food inflation with the highest rises in housing, water, electricity, gas and related fuels.

'The non-food inflation rate of 24.1 percent is about four times as high as the food inflation rate of 5.8 percent,' Nyarko told a news conference, Wednesday. 

The overall figure is the highest since March 2010 and it left inflation well above the government's full-year target of 13 percent – plus or minus 2 percent.

She revealed that food inflation hit a rate of 5.8% up from 5.1% in August. Nonfood inflation recorded a rate of 24.1% increasing from 24%. Education recorded the lowest inflation with a rate of 3.5.

The Greater Accra Region recorded an inflation rate of 17.2%. The Central Region recorded the highest inflation rate of 18.5% with Upper West recording the lowest inflation rate of 10.9%.