Business News of Wednesday, 9 May 2012Source: GNA The annual inflation rate rose to 9.1 per cent in April from 8.8 per cent in March, the Ghana Statistical Service said on Wednesday.

“This means that the general price level went up by 9.1 per cent over the one year period from April 2011 to April 2012,” Dr Philomena Nyarko, Acting Government Statistician told a press conference to announce the figures.

The monthly change rate for April was 1.6 percent compared to 1.2 percent registered in March.

According to her, the food group and non-alcoholic beverages group recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 4.8 percent, with seven sub-groups recording inflation rates higher than the group average.

Bread, Cereal and fish subgroups were the main contributors to inflation in the food group.

Besides imported food products, inflation rate was more than double the inflation rate for local food products.

Dr. Nyarko said, this could be due to the cedi’s depreciation against the dollar.

The rate of inflation in non-food group was up at 11.7 per cent, more than two and a half times that of the food group, with six sub-groups registering inflation rates higher than the group average.

The main contributors to the 11.7% non food inflation were transport and miscellaneous goods and services.

Central Region recorded the highest inflation rate of 12.1 per cent while Upper East & Upper West regions had the lowest rate of 6.3 per cent.**