(Bloomberg) — Ghana’s inflation rate fell in November to a 19-month low, helped by base-effect comparisons with last year and aggressive monetary policy tightening by the central bank.
The consumer price index rose by 26.4% last month on an annual basis following a 35.2% gain in October, government statistician Samuel Kobina Annim said in the capital, Accra, on Wednesday. The median estimate of five economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for price growth to ease to 27.7%.
Prices rose 1.5% in the month, after a 0.6% increase in October. The annual food and non-food inflation rates both fell for the fourth consecutive month to 32.2% and 21.7% respectively, Annim said.
Ghana’s dollar bond maturing in 2032 rose 0.9 cent to 43.85 cents on the dollar at 1:00 p.m. in Accra. The cedi traded relatively unchanged at 12.03 per dollar.
The Bank of Ghana has held its benchmark policy rate at a record high of 30% since July, pausing after a cumulative 16.5 percentage points of tightening since November 2021.
Officials say they will keep policy tight until price pressures are firmly under control. They’ve previously forecast inflation would end the year at 29%, down from a 54.1% peak in December 2022.
Inflation is decelerating but remains high, Governor Ernest Addison said Nov. 27.
“There is the need to keep the policy rate tighter for longer until inflation is firmly anchored on the downward trajectory, ” he said. Annual price-growth has been above the 10% ceiling of the central bank’s target range for more than two years.
(Updates with food and non-food inflation in third paragraph, bond price in fourth.)
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