Recent increases in the prices of goods and services, coupled with a looming hike in utility tariffs have raised concerns about the cost of living in Ghana today.
This situation has made residents in the Sekondi – Takoradi Metropolis react to the development.
Residents have attributed this to the recent increase in fuel prices which has affected the prices of rent, transportation, and food prices among others.
Prices of foodstuff such as tomatoes, cassava, corn, fish and other essentials have seen an astronomical increase.
An interview with some residents, they described the economy as challenging and urged the government to put in place measures to salvage the economic hardship.
Richard, a level 300 student at the Takoradi Technical University (TTU) said, the cost of living in Takoradi is much higher due to fuel price increments. He noted how much he spends on transportation and food, aside from utilities.
Enock Asare, a business owner said, “Day in and out, commodities keep increasing thus making living in the country so unbearable. Rents, food, utilities are seeing a rise all because of the hike in fuel prices. How can we live in a country like that. It’s even difficult to budget for the next three or so months”
However, the Director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of the University of Ghana, Professor Peter Quartey has projected food prices in Ghana to drop but not immediately.
He explained that the rising inflation in the country is due to two main factors, external and domestic. With the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, he said prices of food commodities and other items will certainly go up because of the effect on import.
The warfare, he believes, is not ending anytime soon.
On the domestic front, Prof Quartey explained that food production will go up due to the raining season, a situation that will result in the drop of prices of food items but that will not be immediate.
“Where I sit, I think the inflation is coming from two sources, external that is imported inflation and domestics inflation. with the imported inflation, because we tend to import certain food items as well as other commodities, we will certainly have to import more.
The Russian-Ukraine war the effect of Covid on import and supply chain etc, it is not going to go away immediately. So certainly, we will likely to see increases in inflation.
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“On the domestic front, since we import oil, we import a lot of items as well as produce some locally. Food production will pick up but not immediately because of the rainfed agriculture system that we have been having in our country therefore, as we experience rains, food production will pick up. So in the next couple of months, we are likely to see some harvests which will minimize the effect on inflation,” he said.
