Press spotlights rise in Ghana’s inflation rate to 19.4%, highest in 13 years

APA– Accra Ghana’ s inflation rate which recorded the highest in 13 years in March as the prices of food and transport saw an increase on the back of rising cost of fuel dominates the headlines of Ghanaian press on Thursday. Professor Samuel KobinaAnnim, the Government Statistician, who announced this in Accra yesterday, said the March annual inflation rate was…

APA – Accra (Ghana) Ghana’s inflation rate which recorded the highest in 13 years in March as the prices of food and transport saw an increase on the back of rising cost of fuel dominates the headlines of Ghanaian press on Thursday.

The Ghanaian Times reports that country’s inflation rate rose the highest in 13 years in March as the prices of food and transport saw an increase on the back of rising cost of fuel.

The year-on-year inflation rate jumped to 19.4 per cent in March from 15.7 per cent in February, the highest since August 2009.

The month-on-month change in inflation rate between February and March stood at 4.0 per cent.

Professor Samuel KobinaAnnim, the Government Statistician, who announced this in Accra yesterday, said the March annual inflation rate was influenced by food and transport.

He said food inflation jumped to 22.4 per cent in March from 17.4 per cent in February, with a month-on-month change rate of 4.5 per cent, adding that the average food inflation for the past 12 months stood at 11.8 per cent.

Prof.Annim said transport recorded the highest rate of inflation of 27.6 per cent in the month of March, with the year-on-year average from April 2021 to March 2022 at 15.4 per cent.

He said the non-food inflation for March stood at 17.0 per cent, which was 3.7 per cent higher than the rate recorded in February month-on-month.

Prof. Annim indicated that the average non-food inflation for the past 12 months stood at 11.3 per cent.

The newspaper says that total petroleum revenues from Ghana’s three oil fields increased by 17.5 per cent from $666 million in 2020 to $783 million in 2021 due to higher crude oil prices, the Public Interest Accountability Committee (PIAC) has revealed.

In its 2021 Annual Report on the management and use of petroleum revenues, it said this was despite a 17.7 per cent decline in annual crude oil production from 66,926,806 barrels (bbls) in 2020 to 55,050,391 bbls in 2021.

Launched in Accra yesterday the report said the decline in production was notwithstanding the rebound of economic activities in 2021, after the easing of COVID-19 restrictions.

The release of the 11th annual report is in fulfilment of Section 56 of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA), 2011 (Act 815) which mandates PIAC to monitor and evaluate the management and use of Ghana’s petroleum revenues by the government and stakeholder institutions.

Presenting the highlights, PIAC Chairman, Professor Kwame Adom-Frimpong, said the average achieved crude oil price of $69.18/bbl by the Ghana Group in all fields was higher than the government’s benchmark price of $54.75/bbl.

He said Jubilee Field contributed half of the total output, even though production reduced by 10 per cent from the 2020 output (30,424,539 bbls) while the Tweneboa, Enyenra, Ntomme (TEN) Field’s production declined by 32.7 per cent from 17,802,536 bbls in 2020 to 11,978,064 bbls in 2021.

According to the report the SankofaGyeNyame (SGN) Field recorded its fourth full-year production, with a reduced output by 15.8 per cent from 18,699,731.01 bbls in 2020 to 15,736,846.10 bbls in 2021.

The Graphic reports that the government will begin the disbursement of a GH¢42 million World Bank grant to direct beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme after the Easter festivities.

The grant is to help the government settle two cycles of payments, which are in arrears, to the most vulnerable in the society captured under the cash hand-out programme.

An Assistant Director at the LEAP National Secretariat, Dr Myles Ongoh, who made this known to the Daily Graphic in an interview last Tuesday, said about 344,786 households with about 1.5 million individual beneficiaries would receive the payments.

He said officials from the secretariat would begin the disbursement from April 18 till April 22, this year.

Beneficiary households receive different amounts of money, depending on the number of eligible household members.

For instance, a household with only one eligible member receives GH¢64; two eligible members from one household receive GH¢76, while three eligible members from the same household are offered GH¢88.

Households with four or more eligible members receive GH¢106.

Dr Ongoh explained that the payment structure of the programme was designed in a way that discouraged beneficiaries from being adamant in pursuing alternative sources of income.

The newspaper says that the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation has kick-started an initiative to train 5000 girls from five regions in Information Communication and Technology (ICT).

The regions are Bono, Bono East, Ahafo, Savannah and Northern Region.

The first batch of 1000 girls from various districts in the Bono East Region have already started the training in basic ICT skills and coding.

“We have a very ambitious goal and there is so much work to be done in giving our young girls the right skills. For this reason, I am working closely with the Ministry of Education to ensure that we mainstream practical ICT education in the curriculum of all schools”, Minister of Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful stated.

A statement from the Ministry, signed its Head of Public Relations, Naa Korkoi Essah, said the training in coding will give the girls the opportunity to explore the world of technology, through the creation of websites, computer games, interactive arts, mobile apps, and animation stories, using various programming languages.

It said the training also forms part of strategies to both ensure that Ghana achieves the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, and Ghana’s ICT4AD Policy on bridging the gender gap.

After their training, the girls will participate in a competition which also introduces them to scratch and basic structures of programming.

This competition, the statement said, will test the knowledge and ICT skills acquired during the training period, including website design, development of games, coding and simple ICT applications.