Ken Ofori-Atta
FITCH SOLUTIONS has forecast Ghana’s economy to grow fastest in sub-Saharan Africa this year.
The latest survey carried out by Fitch Solutions on economies in sub-Saharan Africa indicated that a healthy rebound in private consumption and exports will catapult Ghana’s economy to grow strong.
Its projection of a 4.8% expansion in Ghana’s economy though in agreement with the projections of the International Monetary Fund, Moody’s and Standard Bank, the World Bank however, has forecast a humble 1.4% gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate for Ghana this year.
Fitch Solutions stated that Government spending would remain high in the coming quarters, and support the economic rebound.
Additionally, it emphasised that “consumer and business confidence are expected to remain high in third quarter of 2021.”
Fitch Solutions highlighted that “social tensions will remain elevated, the protest movement #FixTheCountry may result in a rise in demonstrations.”
“Sporadic protests likely in the coming months, notably over government concerns, but we think this will be fairly on a small scale and unlikely to have detrimental effect on the growth outlook.”
William Attwell, Senior Risk Analyst at Fitch Solutions in charge of sub Saharan Africa, speaking to Joy Business said “the outlook for Ghana is considerably more upbeat and we focus fairly robust GDP Growth rate of 4.8% which is among the highest rates for any SSA economies. And this reflects a fairly strong consumer recovery, second tranche of government stimulus spending and fairly healthy exports performance”.
“As a case in other SSA markets, Ghana experienced an initial rebound in growth, real GDP rising by a steady if not a spectacular in Q1 (quarter one) by 3.1%. But the economy has subsequently faced headwinds”, he underlined.
1st Quarter Performance
Ghana’s economy, in the first quarter of this year, expanded by 3.1% recording the lowest compared to the same period in 2019.
In 2020, the GDP growth rate picked up to 7.0%.
Data released by the Ghana Statistical Services, pointed out that Construction (14.2%)), Manufacturing (6.1%) as well as the Information and Communication (22.1%) sub-sectors mainly drove growth for Ghana in the first quarter of this year.