Off the wire
• Roundup: Samsung Electronics' operating profit rebounds in Q4  • Fidel Castro meets with Brazilian liberation theologist Frei Betto  • Russian athletes dominate Winter Universiade  • 1st LD: Japan in bid to verify authenticity of new IS audio release  • Xinhua China news advisory -- Jan. 29  • New Zealand, Fiji to resume military cooperation after nine years  • China stock index futures open lower Thursday  • China treasury bond futures open higher Thursday  • ChiNext Index opens lower Thursday  • Benin unveils activities for celebrating Chinese New Year  
You are here: 　 Home

Ghana's PPI drops to record 34.2 percent in December

Xinhua, January 29, 2015 Adjust font size:

Ghana's annual producer price inflation (PPI) dipped by 3.4 percentage points to record 34.2 percent in December from 37.6 percent in the previous month, said the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) on Wednesday.

Mining and quarrying sectors, which account for 13.97 percent of all industries, hit a record year-on-year inflation rate of 43.3 percent, a 2.7-percent increase from the previous month.

Inflation for the manufacturing sector, the largest industrial sub-group with 69.75 percent share of all industries, fell by 6.1 percentage points to a record 33.1 in December.

Inflation for the utilities sector, which account for 16.28 percent of all industries, dropped slightly by 0.1 percentage points from 27.6 percent in November to a record 27.5 percent in December.

The PPI had risen consistently for nine months until it peaked at 48.6 percent last August, and then started its downward trend.

Five out of the 16 major groups in the manufacturing sub-sector recorded inflation rates higher than the group average of 33.1 percent in December.

The manufacture of "other" non-metallic mineral products recorded the highest inflation rate of 71.5 percent.

On petroleum, inflation rate increased consistently from December 2013 to record 56.1 percent in February 2014, then dipped to 44.7 percent the following month before shooting up again to reach 77.3 percent last July.

"The rise in the PPI for mining and quarrying in December was the result of the upward movement of gold prices on the world market in December 2014, compared with the price levels in December 2013," the deputy government statistician explained.

"The effect of gold in the mining and quarrying is about 90 percent and so any movement in gold prices on the world stage affects the mining and quarrying index," added Anthony Krakah, head of the industrial statistics of the GSS.X He said the reported rise in the index for mining and quarrying was also the result of the base rate effect as the rise in gold prices on the world market in December 2014 was higher than the rise recorded a year earlier.

Krakah added that there was also the exchange rate differential contributing to the performance of the mining and quarrying index, as the local currency has depreciated around 32 percent against the major trading currencies in 2014. Endi