Ghana Inflation Quickens to 9.2% in February From Record Low

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ghana’s inflation rate edged up in February, remaining inside the central bank’s target band for an 11th consecutive month. Consumer prices rose 9.2 percent from a year earlier, compared with the record-low rate of 9 percent in January, David Kombat, the acting government statistician at the Ghana Statistical Service, told reporters Wednesday in the capital, Accra. Prices rose 1 percent in the month.

Key Insights:

• The uptick in inflation will leave the central bank with little room to cut borrowing costs after the cedi declined more than 10 percent against the dollar this year.
• The central bank, which will announce its next policy decision on March 25, targets inflation in a range of 6 percent to 10 percent and Governor Ernest Addison has said it may be time to aim even lower.
• The statistics office still uses the old base year of 2012 and once it starts using the 2017 base for the index, that could change the inflation number.