Government missed its end-of-year inflation target of 15% as the December inflation rate surged to 23.8%, according to the Ghana Statistical Service.
This represents a slight increase from the 23.0% recorded in November, marking the fourth consecutive month of rising inflation.
Food inflation was the primary driver of the increase, jumping from 25.9% in November to 27.8% in December. In contrast, non-food inflation saw a slight decrease, falling from 20.7% to 20.3%.
Government Statistician Professor Samuel Kobina Annim explained that the December inflation rate indicated that prices of goods and services increased by 23.8% on a year-on-year basis between December 2023 and December 2024.
He further noted that there was a significant gap of 7.5 percentage points between food and non-food inflation.
“This is against the backdrop that on a year-on-year basis November 2024 we recorded an overall rate of inflation of 23.0% indicating that on a year-on-year basis between November and December 2024 we saw a marginal increase of 0.8 percentage points for the year-on-year inflation.
“Disaggregating year-on-year inflation from a food and non-food perspective, we identified a 7.5 percentage point difference between inflation for food and inflation for non-food with inflation for food standing at 27.8% in December 2024 and non-food inflation at 20.3% for December 2024.
“We have seen an increase in food inflation increasing from 25.9% to 27.8% and in contrast; we have recorded a decline in non-food inflation declining from 20.7% by 0.4 percentage points to 20.3% for the month of December 2024.