Dr Ernest Addison, BoG Governor
Ghana earned $2.8 billion from its major exports in the first two months of this year.
A recent assessment of the country’s external sector developments indicated that in February of 2022, the same figure was recorded.
Compared to some $2.5 billion the country spent on imports for the same period, this resulted in a trade surplus of about US$400 million.
According to the Bank of Ghana’s Summary of Macroeconomic and Financial Data for March this year, the positive trade balance accounted for 0.5 of GDP, which was a decline from the 1.1% of GDP recorded in February 2023.
Gold remained the most dominant contributor to exports fetching $1.3 billion, even though it was a marginal increase from the $1 billion recorded in the same period last year.
Coming after gold were crude oil exports, which totaled $620 million in February 2024, compared to $551 million in February 2023.
Cocoa, however, came in third with $508 million significantly down from $711 million recorded in the same period last year accounting for some $203 million decline.
On the imports side, oil imports fell from $674 million to $599 million. Non-oil imports also decreased from $1.9 billion to $1.3 billion.
The growth in gross international reserves sustained the country’s import cover at 2.8 months.
Net International Reserves of the country stood at $3.5 billion, a marginal increase from the $2.6 billion recorded in February 2023.
The value of the economy in 2023 stood at GHS841.6bn relative to GH¢ 614.3bn representing a GH¢227bn increase from the previous year.
This was driven by the services sector which contributed GH¢357.34 billion or 45.6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), followed by industry with GH¢247.941 billion (31.7% of GDP), and agriculture at GH¢177.606 billion (22.7% of GDP).
Sub-sectors by share of GDP included crops (19.4%), trade and repair of vehicles, household goods (18.3%), mining and quarrying (12.9%), manufacturing (12.1%), and transport and storage (6.0%).
Recent data from the Ghana Statistical Service, shows the cumulative growth of the economy stood at 2.9 percent in 2023.
This was a 0.9 percentage points drop from the 3.8 percent recorded in 2022 but higher than the government’s revised target of 1.5 percent for the period under review.
The fourth quarter also expanded by 3.8 percent. This was the highest for the four quarters of the year 2023.
The annual growth was mostly led by the services sector which recorded an annual rate of 5.5 percent while the growth rate for the industry sector shrunk.
By Samuel Boadi