Ghana’s headline inflation fell sharply through 2025, but the country’s first annual inflation report warns that the improvement in price statistics has not translated into relief for households still grappling with elevated costs and reduced purchasing power.
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) report, which traces inflation across the full 2025 calendar year, draws a clear distinction that official monthly data rarely makes explicit: lower inflation means prices are rising more slowly, not that they have come down. Families that absorbed the weight of successive price increases through the year continued to carry that burden even as the headline rate moderated from 23.5 percent in January to 5.4 percent in December.
The single largest driver of household cost pressure was rent, which alone contributed 8.6 percent of total inflation during the year. Electricity followed at 6.1 percent, meaning housing costs and utility bills accounted for a combined 14.7 percent of all price increases recorded. Food essentials including yam, smoked herrings, imported rice and river fish compounded the burden, with food overall accounting for 51.6 percent of total inflation at an average annual rate of 17.4 percent.
The pain was not evenly distributed. Households in the Upper West Region faced an average inflation rate of 24.9 percent during the year, more than twice the 10.9 percent recorded in Bono East, reflecting deep regional disparities in market access, transport costs and supply chain reliability. For communities already facing limited economic opportunity, the higher end of that range represents a severe real income squeeze.
The cedi’s appreciation against major currencies was identified as one of the most important forces behind disinflation, helping contain imported inflation and ease external price pressure. Fiscal consolidation and the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) monetary policy response also supported the downward trend in prices. Yet the report warned that the gains remain fragile, with utility price adjustments, global energy movements, exchange-rate volatility and food supply disruptions among the risks capable of reversing progress quickly.
Government Statistician Dr. Alhassan Iddrisu, speaking at the launch, stressed that understanding inflation requires more than tracking its direction. The annual report, he said, was designed to explain “what happened to prices, what drove the changes and what they mean for households, businesses and the economy” in a way monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) releases cannot.
The GSS recommended strengthening food systems and supply chains, targeting interventions at high-inflation regions, sustaining monetary-fiscal policy coordination and modernising how inflation is measured to reflect actual consumption patterns.
