Statistical Service to use new basket for calculating inflation

The Ghana Statistical Service is from March this year expected to start using the new basket of goods and services to calculate inflation rate.

This comes after it completed the revision process which saw 30 more items added to the basket to increase the number to 272.

The service has also reviewed the weights given to the items to reflect the current expenditure patterns of consumers.

This should see non-food items, like transportation, communication, and health account for almost 60 percent of goods in the basket and the remainder for food items.

Acting Government Statistician, Philomena Nyarko tells Joy Business the review could result in a drastic change in inflation figures from the next quarter.

Just like the rebasing of the country’s GDP estimates that has put the value of the economy at the last quarter of 2012 at a little over 20 billion cedis, the review in the way inflation is calculated is also to ensure that the rate better reflects what pertains on the ground.