Foreign investors shun Ghana

The Foreign Direct Investment Component of total investments for the first quarter of this year dropped to US$157.57 million from US$1.15 billion recorded at the end of the first quarter of 2016.

This represents a drop of 86.29 percent.

According to a report published by the Ghana Investment Promotion Center (GIPC), the total estimated value of this quarter’s newly registered projects including indigenous ones was US$249.49 million. The local component amounted to US$91.92 million.

A total of 39 projects were registered during the first three months of 2016. Of this, 30 projects representing 76.92 percent were wholly foreign owned enterprises valued at US$163.61million.

The remaining 9 representing 23.08 percent were joint ventures between Ghanaians and foreign partners valued at US$85.88 million.

The services sector recorded the highest number of registered projects of 12 followed by manufacturing and building construction with seven each. Export trade recorded no projects during quarter one of 2016.

A total of 2,487 jobs are expected to be created from the total projects registered during the quarter. Out of this, 2,062 jobs should go to Ghanaians.

The manufacturing sector was expected to create 672 jobs for Ghanaians followed by building and construction and services which were expected to create 613 and 572 jobs respectively.

The agriculture sector which registered only one firm during the first quarter was expected to create 16 jobs.

Four out of the 10 regions directly benefited from the registered projects during the quarter.

The regions are Ashanti, Eastern, Greater Accra and Western region. 11 projects went to the Greater Accra region while five went to the Ashanti region.

84.62 percent of all the projects registered are however located in the Greater Accra region.

China, with 7projects, topped the list of countries with the highest number of registered projects.

With US$65.50 million as the FDI value of the investments, Netherlands topped the list of countries with the largest value of investments registered during the quarter.

Commenting, CEO of GIPC, MawuenaTrebah said “Being an election year also, results of investments recorded so far by the Centre have been no different from the trend realized in the past years of elections.

She however said the first quarter of 2016 has been marked with improvement in the results recorded for investments by local investors.