The pace of Ghana’s economic recovery slowed down in the first quarter of this year, compared to the same period last year as the country’s GDP recorded a 3.3% growth rate in the first three months of 2022, driven by some marginal expansion in the Services and Agriculture sectors.

The growth rate of 3.3% recorded in the first quarter of 2022, is 0.3 percentage points lower than the 3.6% recorded in the corresponding period of 2021.

“So there has been a slowdown in our growth rate relative to the first quarter of 2021″, Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Anim, said during a press conference in Accra on Wednesday, June 22, 2022.

“The real GDP for the first quarter of 2022 grew by 3.3% and this is less than half of what we saw in the last quarter of 2021. In the last quarter of 2021, we did record a 7.0% oil GDP growth and now we are recording a 3.3 oil GDP growth rate for the first quarter of 2022.

“From a non-oil perspective, we recorded 3.7% for the first quarter of 2022 relative to the 7.6% that we recorded for the last quarter of 2021. If you look at it from the perspective of the first quarter of 2021, these are the lowest growth rates that we have recorded discounting the contractions that we recorded during the COVID-19 era. So, since the economy rebounded in 2020 quarter 4, these are the lowest growth rates we have recorded over this time period”.
Professor Samuel Kobina Anim

Growth rates by sector

According to Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Anim, the Agriculture sector led the growth rate, expanding by 5.6%, followed by Services with a growth rate of 3.7%. The Fishing sector recorded the highest growth rate of 26.1% in the Agriculture sector, followed by Livestock with 5.5% and Crops, 5.2%. Forestry and Logging however contracted by 0.5%.

Within the Services sector, Information & Communication led the expansion, growing by 26.6%. Transport and Storage (6.4%), Hotel and Restaurants (5.3%), Finance & Insurance (4.2%), Other Personal Service Activities (3.1%) and Trade, Repair of Vehicle, Household Goods (2.3%) followed suit.

The sub-sectors that contracted were Professional, Administrative & Support (-12.8), Public Administration & Defence, Social Security (-9.8%), Real Estate (-2.6%), Education (-2.0%) and Health & Social Work (-1.0%).

For industry, Water Supply, Sewerage, Waste Management & Remediation Activities (25.4%) and Electricity (15.9%) were the sectors that expanded significantly. Manufacturing also recorded a growth rate of 2.1%.

Construction was the only sub-sector that contracted by 2.0%. This reflects the low investments in infrastructure as a result of the tight budget spending this year. However, the Industry sector grew by 1.3% between January and March this year.

The GDP estimate at current prices in purchaser’s value for Q1, 2022 was estimated at GH¢139.39 billion, compared to GH¢115.69 billion in Q1, 2021.

Based on Sectors, the Services sector maintained its position as the largest sector of the Ghanaian economy in the first quarter of 2022 with a share of 45% of GDP at basic prices. The GDP share of Industry and Agriculture were 32% percent and 23%, respectively.

The government statistician indicated that basically, there are three major approaches used to compute GDP: Income, Expenditure, and output. However, Ghana is yet to use the income approach and so the country is currently using the expenditure and the production approaches to compute the country’s GDP.

The production approach, he explained, is based on the gross value added for all sectors. Prof. Annim said the GSS does the computation for a two-time perspective: quarterly and annually.

The expenditure approach is the estimated sum of expenditure for all final goods and is being captured as an annual estimate, he explained. He further indicated that since today’s release focuses on the first quarter, the production approach was used for the estimates.

According to the GSS Boss, data were obtained from a variety of sources across the three major sectors of the economy: agriculture, services and industry. He noted that the country rebased its GDP in 2013 and so all the data released are based on 2013 constant prices.