|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Claim: Dr Cassiel Ato Forson’s Finance Minister Designate has claimed that inflation currently stands at 28.3%.
Verdict: False. Data from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for December 2024 quotes 23.8% instead.
Full Text
Dr Cassiel Ato Forson appeared before Parliament’s Appointments Committee on Monday, January 13, 2025, to undergo vetting, following President John Mahama’s nomination of him as finance minister. The vetting session was broadcast live on major television networks nationwide, including Channel One TV, TV3, and Joy News.
During the vetting, the committee’s questions centred primarily on the state of the economy. Dr Ato Forson claimed that the current inflation rate was 28.3%.
“I will do whatever it takes to move the economy out of the crisis we are in. My priorities will be low prices, a stable currency, and jobs. Low prices, in the sense that inflation is currently 28.3%, food inflation is 27.8%, and we know that the inflation we see today is largely driven by food inflation,” Forson stated. His claim can be found between 3 hours, 4 minutes, 48 seconds, and 3 hours, 5 minutes, 20 seconds of the televised session from Channel One TV.
Verification
It’s essential to understand inflation and check whether the overall and food inflation rates are 28.3% and 27.8%, respectively.
Imagine you have some candy, and each candy costs one coin. One day, you go to the store and find out the same candy now costs two coins. That means the price of candy has gone up. Inflation is when the prices of many things, not just candy but toys, food, and clothes, rise over time. It happens when the money we use to buy the same quantity of goods and services changes and indicates we can’t buy as much as we used with the same amount.
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) is responsible for publishing inflation data. According to its latest report, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for December 2024, the overall inflation rate was 23.8%. This report was released on January 8, 2025, indicating that the figure cited by Dr Ato Forson, that the current inflation rate is 28.3%, is inaccurate.
However, his claim that food inflation is 27.8% is correct. Data on page 4 of the December 2024 Consumer Price Index report support this figure.
Conclusion
The claim by Finance Minister Designate Dr Cassiel Ato Forson that inflation currently stands at 28.3% is false. The current inflation figure is 23.8%.
