This year’s Africa Statistic Day has been commemorated in Accra, with a call on stakeholders to support the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to provide harmonised data to facilitate the development of the country.
The Deputy Government Statistician, Dr Faustina Frempong-Ainguah, who made the call, said such support was important, since it would help the government and the development partners in their planning and programmes to better the lot of the citizenry.
According to her, the GSS was the bedrock of the country, and that without statisticians, “Ghana will cease to exist” because it was the data they produced that informed decision-making in homes, districts and the country at large.
“If people do not use our data, we will cease to be relevant,” she said, adding that it had become imperative for the service to go all out to get accurate data for the country because “data are not static but change day in, day out”.
The Government Statistician, who was speaking at a data fair as part of the commemoration, said the programme was significant to make people aware of the services the GSS offered.
Producer price inflation
The 2022 Producer Price Index (PPI) was also released at the event.
The PPI measures average changes in prices over time for goods and services produced in the country.
The year-on-year producer price inflation for all industries was 65.2 per cent in October this year, indicating that between October 2021 and October 2022, the PPI increased by 65.2 per cent, representing a 19.3 percentage point increase in producer inflation relative to the 45.9 per cent rate recorded in September 2022.
It covered sectors such as mining and quarrying, manufacturing, electricity and gas, water supply, sewerage and waste management, construction, transport and storage, food and accommodation, information and communications.
In the construction sector, the rate declined marginally from 25.1 per cent in September 2022 to 23.0 per cent in October 2022, while the services sector saw an increase in rate from 5.6 per cent in September 2022 to 10.0 per cent in October 2022.
The mining and quarrying sector accounted for 86.4 per cent; manufacturing, 73.1 per cent; transport and storage, 71.4 per cent, while information and communications activities recorded the lowest rate of 1.5 per cent in October 2022.
Personal Inflation Calculator
The Head of the Price Statistics Section at the GSS, John Forster Agyaho, said a personal inflation calculator (PIC) would be introduced to help people check inflation on food, goods and services on their own to enable them to plan their lives.
“You need to make sure you are not hit by the global challenges we are facing. If you eat plantain a lot and you realise that the price of plantain keeps increasing, you can switch to something else.
“So it is to help people make decisions to cushion them in these difficult times,” he added.
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