You cannot compare our inflation rate with other African countries – Government Statistician
Professor Samuel Annim, the Government Statistician has said it would not be fair to juxtapose Ghana’s inflation rate to that of its African counterparts.
Food inflation in Ghana shot up to 30.1 per cent in May 2022, compared to 26.6 per cent recorded in April, higher than most African countries.
Nigeria for instance, has 16.82%, according to the latest CPI report by the country’s statistical agency.
In an interview on Citi FM, 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 per cent and that of Nigeria is 16.82 per cent, without looking at the number of times Nigeria’s rate of inflation has changed over some time, that argument will be out of context. For instance, same time last year, our inflation rate was 7.5 per cent 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 per cent when ours was about 7.5 per cent, we will not be doing justice to the numbers,” he argued.
Ghana’s inflation rose again to hit 27.6 per cent in May 2022.
This represents a four percentage points increase in the inflation rate compared to the 23.6 per cent recorded in April 2022.
