Introduce policies to reduce production, transport cost of staple food – GSS

 The government has been urged to introduce poli­cies to reduce the cost of production and transport of staple food and fish items such as large onion, tomato, fresh and smoked herrings, and kenkey and fish to market centres.

That, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) stated that would help increase their production and reduce their cost on the market in order to help control inflation to bring relief to the citizens.

A Data Scien­tist at the GSS, Simon Tichutab Onilimor, made the call yesterday in Accra stakeholders’ engagement on con­sumer price inflation, and staple food continue to drive inflation up since 2018.

The objective of the engage­ment was to foster collaboration and dialogue among key stakehold­ers, including government officials and the media on Consumer Price Inflation (CPI).

It was attended by represen­tatives from Bank of Ghana, Ministries of Finance, Agriculture, and Trade and Industry.

Mr Onilimor in a presentation underlined that some specific staple food items continue to drive inflation up since the CPI basket was rebased in 2018.

He mentioned some of the food items as beans, beef, yam, kenkey and fish, fried plantain, smoked river fish, and smoked herrings continue to drive inflation

“The items consistently re­cording the highest price changes constitute almost of a third of average household expenditure,” Mr Onilimor stated.

The Data Scientist emphasised the need to introduce measures to bring business and trotro fares down.

Mr Onilimor said the median prices of bus and trotro fares in­creased substantially since the CPI was rebased.

He said several factors contrib­uted to consumer price inflation.

The Data Scientist mentioned some as seasonality and cost of production.

Additionally, he stated that the duty of GSS was not to project inflation but to show the rate of change of inflation and data to help policymakers to come out with interventions to help control inflation.

The Acting Government Statistician, Asuo Afram, said the programme was to provide infor­mation that would help support the development of targeted and strategic interventions aimed at reducing inflation, particularly food inflation.

He said the computation of inflation was also to help families to plan on their expenditure and know the rate at which prices of goods and services were going up coming down.

Mr Afram said the media were involved in the programme be­cause of the important role they played in information dissemina­tion.

He said without the media, the work of GSS would not be known by the public.

The Head of Price Statistics at GSS, J. F. K Agyaho said the computation of inflation had no political influence.

He said the GSS followed inter­national standards and robust rules and guidelines in the computation of inflation.

My Agyaho explained that there was no way any government could influence the process for the com­pilation of data for the computa­tion of inflation.

 BY KINGSLEY ASARE

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