Accra, April 19, GNA – Ghana’s economic growth slowed to 3.1 per cent, year-on-year in 2022, compared with 5.1 per cent the previous year, the Ghana Statistical Service said on Wednesday.
The growth for the last three months (October to December) of 2022 stood at 3.7 per cent spurred by the mining and quarrying sub-sector.
Sectoral data provided by GSS indicated that, the Services sector had the highest growth of 7.6 per cent, followed by the Agriculture sector with a growth of 3.6 per cent, while Industry had a contraction of 1.0 per cent growth rate.
“The Mining and Quarrying, Information and Communication, Public Administration, Defence and Social Security, Crops, and Education sub-sectors were the main drivers of GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2022,” GSS said.
The major sub-sectors that recorded more than 10 percentage expansion in quarter four of 2022 included information and communication (20.5 per cent), and public administration, defense and social security (15.7 per cent).
The rest are; Mining and Quarrying (13.4 per cent), education (12.3 per cent), and Health and Social Work (10.5 per cent).
Seven other sub-sectors contracted, and they are; water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities (-13.4 per cent), real estate (-13.4 per cent), electricity (-12.8 per cent).
Other sub-sectors that contracted were manufacturing 9.6 per cent, professional, administrative and support service activities 7.7 per cent), construction 7.1 per cent, and fishing 1.5 per cent.
Gross Domestic Product growth is the main indicator of economic performance, and there are three approaches used to measure GDP: the output approach, the expenditure approach, and the income approach.
The Government has projected overall GDP growth of 2.8 per cent in 2023 (lower than the 3.7 per cent for 2022), but the International Monetary Fund is predicting that the economy would rebound in 2024.
The Fund said, supported by extractive activities in the country, there would be an increase in GDP growth to 3.9 per cent in 2024.
