The Ghana Statistical Service has introduced the new unit value index into its regular price statistics, particularly the consumer price index and trade statistics.
This measures the price change contribution associated with output, indicating the unit price of each item or commodity on a quarter-on-quarter.
According to the government statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Anim, this will allow policymakers to know the drivers of the performance of macroeconomic indicators in terms of price or output.
Prof. Samuel Anim spoke at the launch of the 2023 and first quarter of the Ghana Trade Report in Accra.
“The reason why we do this is to enable us to distinguish between our changes in total trade, that are attributed to price changes and our changes in total trade that are attributed to advancement improvement that we take out commodities through to ensure that they get higher values.
On the diversification of the new items that we bring on board to ensure that we get high values.
If our exports are mainly driven by price changes all that it means is that in real terms our volumes of trade are not growing, and that is not what we want.
What we want to see is that our volumes of trade should improve more from an output perspective, real perspective rather than the nominal perspective which means that it is mainly driven by prices,” Prof. Anim said.
Professor Kobina Anim said Ghana’s trade balance between 2021 and 2023 from the unit value index indicates that price was the main driver instead of output.
“In the first quarter of 2021 our total trade value was 44.5 million cedis, this has increased by 2.4 times relative to the first quarter of 2024.
So one can comfortably say that, from an expansion point of view, which we have in our national strategy for the development of statistics, which is an indicator for the sustainable development goals, one can argue that from 44.5, Two Hundred and 5 points 6 billion cedis between the first quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2024 are trade value as more than double,” He added.
