Is Ghana Statistical Service undermining the Efforts of Bank of Ghana With Respect to Rising Inflation? : Razak Kojo Opoku quizzes

Is Ghana Statistical Service undermining the Efforts of Bank of Ghana With Respect to Rising Inflation? : Razak Kojo Opoku quizzes

Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures proportionate changes in the prices of goods and services that households consume. To achieve a perfect estimate for CPI, Ghana Statistical Service(GSS) is supposed to count how much everyone in Ghana spends every month, however, this practically impossible for GSS to achieve. Instead, GSS make use of a sample of products that are “representative” for Ghana.

As far as I am concerned and considering the various interventions taken by the Bank of Ghana to curtail the rising inflation in the country, it is very convincing to conclude that the Government Statistician and Ghana Statistical Service might not be doing something right with the computation of the 27.6% rising inflation.

I would like to find out from the Government Statistician these simple questions:

1. What influenced Ghana Statistical Service to revised the method for CPI estimation in 2019 in collaboration with IMF, World Bank and Statistics Denmark?

2. Are we now using the methodology of IMF, World Bank and Statistics Denmark to calculate the inflation rate of Ghana?

3. In Ghana, the CPI represents the prices paid by the average urban consumer, so what about the average rural consumer where prices for food are extremely low?

4. We were made to understand by GSS that steps were being taken by GSS to find innovative solutions to better measure and include both the informal economy and online shopping behaviour.

We want to know what has become of those steps?

5. We were made to understand by GSS that, GSS in collaboration with UK Office for National Statistics was designing new methods to streamline the data collection process and make the CPI computations more efficient and transparent.

We want to know the outcome of this initiative and it influence on the computation of Ghana’s inflation rate?

6. We were informed by GSS in 2019 that, GSS is working on an extensive technical CPI Manual which will chronicle the exact Statistical Methods of sampling, collecting, weighing, aggregating chain-linking and publishing of the results.

We want to know far with this project?

7. Is GSS staff collecting the right Data from the right marketplaces for the computation of the monthly inflation rate or some staff of GSS are presenting wrong Data for the inflation rate computation just to discredit the efforts of Bank of Ghana in the management of Inflation in Ghana?

8. Is Ghana Statistical Service using the right “representative” to calculate the inflation rate as far as prices of goods and services are concerned in Ghana?

As a Country are we satisfied with the work of Ghana Statistical Service and Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim so far?

It seems the work of the Government Statistician is undermining the measures taken by the Bank of Ghana to solve the problem of rising inflation.

I think that the government should set up a Joint Committee for the Bank of Ghana and Ghana Statistical Services to carefully examine and sync strategies to deal with the management of the rising inflation extensively.