Producer inflation remains at 7.1% in April 2019

This is the same as the rate for March 2019.

The Producer Price Index (PPI) measures the average change over time in the prices received by domestic producers for the production of their goods and services.

According to the Government Statistician, Prof Samuel Annim, factors contributing to this rate include the fall in the price index for the mining and quarrying sector and the petroleum price index, as well as a slight increase in the overall manufacturing and utilities sector.

The manufacturing and utilities sectors increased by 0.7 and 0.3 percentage points to record 7.5 percent and 1.1 percent, respectively. However, these increases became insignificant because the mining and quarrying sector recorded 15.9 percent which is a 3.6 percentage point’s decrease.

The manufacturing sector constitutes more than two-thirds of the total industry in the computation of the PPI.

During the month under review, three out of the sixteen major groups in the manufacturing sub-sector recorded inflation rates higher than the sector average of 6.1 percent.

The producer price inflation rate in the petroleum sub-sector has been volatile both upwards and downwards over the past year. It was 22.7 percent in April 2018. Afterwards, it increased to 44.2 percent in June 2018 but decreased to 31.1 percent in September 2018. However, it increased again to 36.1 percent in October 2018. It again resumed the downward trend to record 3.8 percent in January 2019 but increased consistently to record 17.2 percent in April 2019.