GSS, NPP Wrangle Over Inflation Figures

Dr Grace Bediako, Government Statistician

The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are on a collision course over the collection and computation of prices from the market to arrive at monthly inflation figures.

While the NPP is suspecting irregularities and errors in the collection and computation of the figures,which could have resulted in inacurrate inflation figures, the GSS has discounted the claim, explaining that it has been using the same questionnaire, methodology, tools and Consumer Price Index software since 2001 and, therefore, the inflation figures for 2011 are correct.

In a letter to the GSS, the NPP stated that after studying the market retail prices it collected from the GSS, which formed the basis for the calculation of the inflation figures, it had identified some irregularities and errors in the data.

The party, therefore, called on the GSS to institute full investigations into those irregularities and undertake a thorough review of data capturing and data processing systems for generating inflation figures in the country.

“These irregularities could explain the differences between the inflation figures put out by the GSS and the experiences of people who visit Ghana’s markets. Put in another way, the irregularities justify doubts about the accurateness of the figures the GSS publishes,” the statement said.

Explaining further, Mr Kweku Kwarteng, NPP’s Spokesperson on Economy, said studying the data, the party realised that some prices for certain items and services, including property tax in Kumasi, PTA dues throughout the country, prices of pineapple in Bolgatanga, coconut oil in Bolgatanga, were recorded as zero and said such zero prices could not be possible.

In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Director, Economics and Industrial Statistics Division of the GSS, Mr Magnus Ebo Duncan, said the NPP got it all wrong because in the first place, because indicating zero price for a particular product or service did not mean that the price of such item was zero.

He added that the service used the same questionnaire for collecting information on 242 items throughout the country from specific outlets for prices to avoid bias and uphold one of the cardinal principles of statistics, which is ensuring consistency.

Mr Duncan said it had been doing the same work with the same tools, methodology and software since 2001 and that the GSS field workers collected prices and other information, including weights of items from markets in both urban and rural areas.

He explained that in each urban market, information was collected from six different but constant outlets, while that of the rural area was restricted to three outlets in each market.

He further explained that field officers, in collecting the information, had been instructed to collect information from specific outlets, so, for instance, when a field officer collected information on television shops, he should be consistent and collect information on 21-inch Samsung alone or 21-inch Akai television sets throughout the year without mixing such collection with information on Samsung and Akai prices.

Mr Duncan said in case the field officer got information from only four out of the six shops, the officer would put zero in the spaces provided for the two outlets and that the computer had been programmed to strike the average of four outlets and not six outlets.

The zero that would be written in the price space for the two shops would not mean the prices of the television sets were indeed zero or free.

He said it was nearly impossible to get pineapple in Bolgatanga in Januaryor fresh herrings in Kumasi during the same period and that in such cases, the field officer would put zero there instead of dash, because mathematically zero was appropriate and that the software was such that it would recognise all those differences.

Regarding the property tax in Kumasi, Mr Duncan said, “the field officers wrote zero not because it was free but it meant that either the officer had collected it earlier or had not collected it at all. If the officer had not collected the information, then in computing the final figures the software would use would be the previous year’s prices. It could also mean that because such rates were collected yearly, it had been captured in previous month’s data.”

“The questionnaires requested for prices on items such as pork and said it was a known fact that there was no way one could get either the pork and palm wine or their prices in a predominantly Muslim community, therefore, in such instance the field officer would write zero, and this did not mean that such items were free,” he added.