3rd Quarter GDP Grows By 1.7%

Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the third quarter of 2012 grew by 1.7 percent year-on-year. The agriculture sector recorded the highest growth of 4.6 percent followed by industry (3.6 percent).

The Services sector, however, recorded a decline of -2.2 percent, Acting Government Statistician, Dr Philomena Nyarko, has announced.

Presenting the Quarterly GDP Newsletter for the 3rd Quarter of 2012, Dr Nyarko said seasonally adjusted quarter-on-quarter estimates of the real GDP grew by -0.2 percent in the third quarter of 2012 over the second quarter’s record.

According to her, most of the sub-sectors, especially the services sector, showed no evidence of seasonality including some subsectors in the industry sector, namely manufacturing, manufacturing and quarrying.

“Industry and services sectors recorded growths of 11.2 percent and 0.9 respectively. The agriculture sector, however recorded a decline of -2.5 percent. Other key findings indicated that positive growths were recorded especially in construction activities 26.2 percent; mining and quarrying 16.0 percent and other personal service activities 10.6 percent.”

Declines were recorded especially in fishing activities-14.6 percent, hotel and restaurants -7.6 percent and manufacturing -6.9 percent.

By comparison, in the 3rd quarter findings of 2011 the crops subsector including cocoa grew by 9.4 percent, while livestock, forestry and fishing recorded declines of -20.5 percent, -7.5 percent and -24.2 percent respectively.

The main contributors of the industry sector over the period were the construction subsector which recorded a growth of 19.2 percent, mining and quarrying which registered 5.2 percent as well as water and sewerage activities which recorded 0.6 percent.

The main contributors to the services sector were hotel and restaurants 31.8 percent, financial and insurance 22.6 percent and business, real estate and other business activities 15.3 percent.

Nonetheless, transport and storage, as well as information and communications subsectors contributed negatively to the growth of the services sector.

The 2011 and 2012 quarterly GDP estimates are revised and preliminary respectively, and may routinely be revised on the basis of additional data being made available.

The 2nd quarter estimates for certain subsectors were revised in the 3rd quarter.

Her outfit, she said, does provisional estimates of the economic indicators while the Ministry of Finance & Economic Planning (MOFEP) does the projections.