Predicting Petrol and Diesel Prices in Ghana, A Comparison of ARIMA and SARIMA Models

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Predicting prices is of great concern and important in the world of economics and finance. In this paper, a comparative analysis of gasoline and diesel in Ghana were analysed using Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA). Based on their forecasting accuracy, the best model was used for predicting future prices of gasoline and diesel from January 2024 to December 2024. A monthly data for the prices of gasoline and diesel spanning from January 2016 to December 2023 taken from the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) was used for the analysis. ARIMA (0; 1; 2) and ARIMA (2; 1; 3) were identified as the best models for gasoline and diesel respectively, SARIMA(0; 1; 2) x (0; 1; 1)12 and SARIMA (1; 1; 1) x (0; 1; 1)12 were also identified after taking a seasonal difference of the series all based on AIC and BIC. The coefficient of the identified models were tested for its significance using the Z-test. The ARIMA and the SARIMA models were compared using RMSE, MAE, and MAPE. The SARIMA models generally performed better than the ARIMA models for both gasoline and diesel except RMSE for diesel where the ARIMA model was slightly better than the SARIMA models with values of 0:9677988 and 1:011531 respectively. The model evaluation proved that the SARIMA models for both gasoline and diesel were superior to the ARIMA and showed that, the SARIMA model is adequate and appropriate for forecasting of prices of gasoline and diesel prices in Ghana.