Inflation drops to 23.1% in May

The year-on-year inflation rate fell for the second consecutive month to 23.1% in May 2024 from 25% recorded in April 2024. This rate is the lowest the country has recorded in the last 26 months, with food inflation contributing significantly to the overall decline. Food inflation decreased to 22.6% from 26.8% in April 2024.
“We’ve seen for the second consecutive time a drop in the year-on-year inflation by 1.9 percentage points to the current year-on-year inflation for May 2024, standing at 23.1%,” Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, Government Statistician, said.
Speaking at the release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for May 2024 in Accra, he explained that the prices of goods and services between May 2023 and May 2024 increased by 23.1%.
The CPI measures the changes in the price of a fixed basket of goods and services purchased by households, with the assumption that any price change on a month-by-month basis affects the total price of the basket.
“This indicates a slowdown of 1.9 percentage points relative to the year-on-year inflation recorded in April 2024,” the Government Statistician explained.
“On a year-on-year basis, the 23.1% recorded for May 2024 is the lowest rate of inflation recorded in the last 26 months,” he said.
Between March and May 2024, there was a decline from 25.8% in March to 25% in April, before a further decline to 23.1% in May 2024.
Providing a disaggregation, Prof. Annim stated that there was a one percentage point difference between food and non-food inflation, with food inflation at 22.6% and non-food inflation at 23.6%.
“This is the second consecutive time we’ve seen a drop in food inflation. In March, food inflation stood at 29.6%, declining to 26.8%, and for the second time in a row, it further declined by 4.2 percentage points to 22.6% in May 2024,” he said.
He noted that the 22.6% recorded for May 2024 is the lowest food inflation rate in the last 13 months, while non-food inflation saw a third consecutive increase.
The inflation rate for locally produced items was 24.7%, while that of imported items stood at 19.6% for May 2024.
The rate of inflation is derived from the CPI and uses three key variables in its computation: prices, quantities, and weights of expenditure in the basket.
The data on prices are collected on a monthly basis from all 16 administrative regions of the country in 57 markets from about 8,337 outlets for approximately 47,800 items.