Key persons launching the database
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research (ISSER) have released the 2019 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) economy-wide database.
A Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) tracks the prevailing conditions of payments and receipts related to all economic transactions. It entails all comprehensive and consistent transactions done within the economy.
The Ghana 2019 SAM forms part of the Nexus project which is funded by USAID, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres (CGIAR).
The Ghana 2019 SAM is the third that has been produced in the country after the 2007 and 2017 SAMs.
Country Team Representative of IFPRI, Seth Asante, explained that the objective of the project is to establish common data standards, procedures, and classification systems for constructing and updating national SAMs used for country-level computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling.
He added that the database aims at providing a standard platform for policy analysis that will help economists and policymakers understand the structure of the economy therefore aiding in policy implantation and identification of vulnerabilities within the economy.
He further explained that although the Ghana 2019 SAM used data from 2022 in its work, 2019 formed the bases where they could easily predict and implement shocks as the effects of Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war on the economy would not predict its true nature.
Information from the database indicated the structure of production and trade in agriculture, industry, and services in 2019. It also indicated household income sources, household population, and expenditure of that year.
It revealed that the agriculture sector had a GDP of 18.5 per cent with crops contributing 14.6 per cent to the percentage. The industry sector registered a total GDP of 33.2 per cent with manufacturing and mining being the largest contributors in that sector with 13.3 per cent. Wholesale and retail trade also dominated the services sector with a GDP contribution of 18.7 per cent to the total 48.2 per cent registered in 2019.
The data also highlighted that poor and rural households spent most of the incomes on food with 52.8 per cent of their consumption spending therefore leaving their saving rate at 3.5 per cent. Urban households were also noticed to spend 37.2 per cent on food and having a savings rate of 9.6 per cent.
Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim expressed the hope that the Ghana 2019 SAM would be widely utilised and help highlight the breakdowns of observations (disaggregates) in the economy.
“As a country, we have not consciously utilised the SAM. It is my hope that this launch will get us into the space where anytime we think about issues around taxes and we want to put a cap around it in terms of what value it should be, the first thing we will think about is how we can use the SAM to tell us whether it is going to lunge people further into poverty or it is going to take people out of poverty,” he stated.
“We have emphasized headline statistics as a country to the neglect of the disaggregate. The SAM is one of the statistical products that allows us to deal with the disaggregate and understand the structure of the economy. So if we do not take up these statistics and continue to work with a GDP figure, we wouldn’t be taking the country anywhere. This is the statistical product that will tell us whether the economy is moving in a positive direction or not,” he said.
By Abigail Atinuke Seyram Adeyemi