The producer price inflation for industry keeps declining all year round from a record of 7.7 per cent in January 2018 to 3.4 per cent in January 2019.

The rate decreased consistently to record 3.7 per cent in March 2018, and subsequently, increased continuously to record 8.2 per cent in July 2018 and to 5.8 per cent in September 2018.

In October 2018, the rate increased to 7.2 per cent, but declined continuously to record 3.4 per cent in January this year.

Mr David Yenukwa Kombat, Acting Government Statistician, who announced this in Accra, attributed the continuous decline in the sector to exchange rate, fuel and other raw materials used in manufacturing.

He said the year-on-year producer inflation for all industry was 3.4 per cent in January 2019 and the monthly change rate was 0.3 per cent, adding that the Mining and Quarrying sub-sector recorded the highest year-on-year price inflation rate 8.9 per cent, followed by manufacturing sub-sector with 3.0 per cent.

The Utility sub-sector recorded the year-on-year producer inflation of -0.1 per cent.

Mr Kombat said with respect to the monthly changes, Mining and Quarrying recorded the highest inflation rate of 4.6 per cent, an increase of 0.4 percentage points over the December 2018 rate of 8.5 per cent.

That was followed by the Utility sub-sector with 0.1 per cent, while the manufacturing sub-sector recorded the lowest inflation rate of -0.7 per cent.

He said the producer inflation for manufacturing, which constituted more than two-thirds of total industry decreased by 1.5 percentage points to record 3.0 per cent and during the month of January 2019, five out of the 16 major groups in the manufacturing sub-sector recorded inflation rates higher than the sector average of 3.0 per cent.

He noted that the manufacturing of basic metals recorded the highest inflation rate of 16.8 per cent, while manufacturing of machinery and equipment recorded 0.0 per cent and attributed the higher inflation recorded for basic metals to importation of raw materials.

The producer inflation rate in the petroleum sub-sector was 29.0 per cent in January 2018, the rate declined consistently to record 15.9 per cent in March 2018.

Subsequently, the rate increased to 44.2 per cent in June 2018, but decreased to 31.1 per cent in September 2018.

It however, resumed an upward trend to record 36.1 per cent in October 2018 and then declined consistently to record 3.8 per cent in January 2019.

Source: GNA