The Producer price Index (PPI) that measures the average change over time in the prices received by domestic producers for the production of their goods and services for the month of March recorded 6.0%.
The rate represents a 0.6 percentage point increase in producer inflation relative to the rate of 5.4% recorded in February 2017.
Briefing the press in Accra yesterday, the Acting Government Statistician, Dr. Baah Wadieh, explained that the month-on-month change in producer price index between February and March was 1.4%.
The Acting Government Statistician said the mining and quarrying sub-sector recorded the higher year-on-year PPI rate of 20.8% followed by manufacturing sub-sector with 4.0% while the utility sub-sector recorded 1.5% each.
He explained that with respect to the monthly changes, the mining and quarrying sub-sector recorded the lowest rate of 0.1%.
Dr. Wadieh, however, attributed the sharp year-on-year increase in the mining and quarrying sub-sector to the increase of gold prices in the international market as well as the depreciation of the Cedi in 2016.
"During the month of March 2017, 11 out of the 16 major groups in the manufacturing sub-sector recorded inflation rates higher than the sector average of 4.0%," he said.
Explaining, he said manufacture of electrical machinery and apparatus recorded the highest inflation rate of 21.2% while the manufacture of other non-metallic mineral products recorded the lowest PPI rate of -2.3%.
He added that the PPI in the petroleum sub-sector was 2.9% in March 2016. The rate rose to record 6.5% in April 2016 but declined slightly to 6.1 in May 2016.
Moving forward, Dr. Wadieh indicated that the year-on-year Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which measures the total value of final goods and services produced in the country, for the last quarter of 2016, grew by 4.1%.
The rate represents a 0.2% increase as compared to 3.9% recorded in the last quarter of 2015.
Dr. Wadieh indicated that the services sector recorded the highest growth of 6.3% followed by the industry and agriculture sectors with 3.0% and 1.9% respectively.
He said, "The agriculture sector, the livestock and crop sub-sectors grew by 1.8% and 0.6% respectively in the fourth quarter of 2016 compared to the 1.1% growth recorded by both sectors in the third quarter of 2016".
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