‘It’ll be out of place to compare Ghana’s inflation rate with other African countries’ – Government Statistician

Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim, says it will be out of place to compare Ghana’s inflation rate with other African countries.

Food inflation rose to 30.1 percent in May 2022, compared to 26.6 percent recorded in April, higher than most African countries.

The inflation rate in Nigeria, for instance, is now 16.82%, according to the latest CPI report by the country’s statistical agency.

In an interview with Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show, Professor Annim said it would be incorrect to conclude that Ghana is worst off without considering the inflation rate history of other countries.

“It is always not advisable to look at a statistic from only one point time perspective. One of the things I see going around is the number of times inflation has increased in different countries. So if now, for some reason someone says that Ghana’s inflation rate is 26.6 percent and that of Nigeria is 16.82 percent, without looking at the number of times Nigeria’s rate of inflation has changed over a period of time, that argument will be out of context. For instance, same time last year, our inflation rate was 2.5 percent so if you look at our current inflation rate, it is four times more.”

“If you take that of Nigeria which was also about say 3 percent when ours was about 7.5 percent, we will not be doing justice to the numbers,” he argued.

Ghana's inflation has soared again to hit 27.6 percent in the month of May 2022.

This represents a four percentage points increase in the inflation rate compared to the 23.6 percent recorded in April 2022.

On a monthly basis, inflation, however, dropped by one percent to record 4.1 percent in May 2022.

This was captured in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) on Wednesday, June 8, 2022.

By Citi Newsroom