Ghana Unlikely to Meet 7.1% Growth Target for 2019

December 23, 2019
Ghana Unlikely to Meet 7.1% Growth Target for 2019
Ghana national flag

By Adedapo Adesanya

There are strong indications that Ghana may not meet its 7.1 percent economic growth projections for 2019, as the country’s third quarter result showed that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at 5.6 percent.

To meeting this year’s target, the West African country will need an accelerated growth of 10.0 percent in the fourth quarter of the year. This is, however, a tough task that is near impossible because key sectors such as construction, financial services, and manufacturing would perform excellently well to be able to meet up, and the indicators of these integral part of Ghana’s economy show their numbers are not favourable.

According to one of Ghana’s top economist and analyst with Data Bank, Courage Martey, “For 2019, I think it is late in the day because we are already in December and any policy implementation right now to achieve that 7.0 percent target for end-2019 will only spillover into the 2020 growth numbers.”

“If you look at critical areas that are struggling to pull up, you look at the construction sub-sector, the growth numbers are not quite impressive after contracting in the first two quarters,” the economist said on Ghana’s Class 91.3 FM.

He added that “they have assumed positive growth but then the construction sector needs to grow strongly and that is where we have contractors getting their payment and we are having liquidity being injected into the economy.”

Hinting on how the government could do this, he encouraged the government to work tirelessly on the Sinohydro project as this will get the construction sector busy and growing.

The project is a deal between Ghana and China for a bauxite-for-development barter agreement which would see the leveraging of a fraction of Ghana’s abundant bauxite by China to undertake a massive overhaul of her infrastructural, industrial and agricultural base.

Meanwhile, provisional data available on the performance of the economy as of the end of September 2019 showed that most of the country’s macroeconomic indicators are on target.

Adedapo Adesanya

Adedapo Adesanya is a journalist, polymath, and connoisseur of everything art. When he is not writing, he has his nose buried in one of the many books or articles he has bookmarked or simply listening to good music with a bottle of beer or wine. He supports the greatest club in the world, Manchester United F.C.

Leave a Reply

Obu Cement Company
Previous Story

NSE Approves Listing of Obu Cement Company Shares

Train derails at Asade Mangoro Lagos
Next Story

FEC Yet to Approve $3.5bn Ibadan-Kano Standard Guage—Amaechi

Latest from World