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Gold price affects producer price inflation of 10.2%


By Fred Yaw Sarpong
The continues decline of gold price on the international market affected Ghana’s producer price index released by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) for April 2013.
This was announced by the acting Government Statistician, Dr. Philomena Nyarko in Accra, during the released of Producer Price Index (PPI).
The PPI measures the average change over time in the prices received by domestic producers for the production of their goods and services.
She indicated that for some months now gold price on the international market has been going down. The current gold price is hovering around US$1,386, a change of negative 4.41, representing negative 0.32%.
Bank of Ghana announced through it Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting that total exports declined by 7.3% in year-on-year terms to US$3.8 billion during the first quarter of 2013. Of the total, gold exports were US$1.5 billion, Cocoa beans and products were US$725.8 million, and Crude oil exports amounted to US$1.1 billion. 
Dr. Nyarko indicated that this reflected in the producer price inflation in the mining and quarrying subsector, which reduced the sector inflation rate by 4.0 percentage points, compared to the rate recorded in March 2013, which was 6.4%. The April rate was 2.4%.
Meanwhile, producer price inflation for the manufacturing sector for April 2013 was 14.4%, representing 0.3 percentage points higher than that for March 2013 (14.1%). The rate for the utilities sub-sector for April 2013 remained unchanged at 1.0%.
During the month of April 2013, seven out of the 16 major groups in the manufacturing subsector recorded inflation rates higher than the sector average figure of 14.4%. Manufacture of textiles recorded the highest inflation rate of 33.1%, while producer prices in the manufacture of machinery and equipment recorded no change over the one year period.
Between April 2012 and April 2013, the highest year-on-year inflation of 19.1% for all industry was recorded in June and October 2012 and the lowest in February 2013 with the rate of 9.1%.
Again between April and July 2012, the producer price inflation rose steadily. Therefore, the rate fluctuated until December 2012. However, from December 2012 to February 2013, the rate declined to 9.1% but increased steadily to record 10.6% in March 2013, and subsequently declined to 10.2% in April 2013.
Between April 2012 and May 2012, the inflation rate in the petroleum sub-sector declined and thereafter remained stable until December 2012. However, it dropped in January 2013 and subsequently rose in March 2013. In April 2013, the rate remained virtually unchanged at 12.2%.


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