The Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim has advised policy makers to take a critical look at factors contributing to the increase of food inflation.
He pointed out that food inflation has consistently seen an increase with about 20 percentage point compared to non-food inflation.
Speaking to Journalists after announcing the Inflation for June which increased marginally to 42.5 percent compared to 42.2 percent in May, Prof. Annim announced that prices of common staple food such as vegetables and fish continue to record an increase over the period.
“At the minimum we see a widening of the gap between food and non-food inflation. We need to focus on why we see food inflation going up. We have seen about a 20 percentage point change between food inflation and non-food inflation”, he said.
He announced that food inflation was at 54.2 percent higher than the national average, with imported products increasing by 43.8 percent while locally produced items saw a rate 36.2 percent.