GIPC fails to publish quarterly FDI reports two years running

For the second year running, the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) has failed to publish its quarterly Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) report on schedule.

With barely three weeks to end the year, the Centre has failed to even publish the first quarter of the 2019 FDI report.

Last year’s quarterly reports were all merged into one and published in January 2019.

It is not clear whether the GIPC would publish all of this year’s quarterlies as a bunch by the end of the year or repeat the incident of last year by publishing it early 2020.

It is also unclear why the Centre has failed to publish the quarterly FDI report.

The absence of the FDI report impacts policy planning and projections negatively, while research and private institutions that rely on them for their analyses, are not able to do so.

An official from the GIPC admitted to ClassFMonline.com that the Centre has not published any of the quarterly reports but added that they were ready and would soon be published on the GIPC’s website.

Last year, GIPC failed to hit its US$10 billion FDI target, attracting only US$3.46 billion.

According to the 2018 figures by GIPC, 18,825 jobs were expected to be generated as a result of the investments. 7,870, approximately 43.91 per cent of the jobs were to be created by the services sector, while the manufacturing sector was expected to generate 4,859 (27.11 per cent) of the jobs

Of the 168 projects recorded between January to December 2018, 117 (69.64 per cent) were wholly foreign-owned with total investment value of US$ 2.89 billion.

The remaining 51 were Joint Ventures between Ghanaians and their foreign counterparts which amounted to US$ 652.02 million.

In terms of project numbers, China led with Chinese investors participating in 37 projects. India came second with Indian investors participating in 18 projects and was followed closely by the Netherlands and United Kingdom with 15 and 12 projects, respectively.

In terms of investment values, the Netherlands emerged tops with Dutch-owned projects having a total investment value of US$ 1.9 billion and an FDI component of US$ 1.89 billion. India followed with total project investment values of US$ 549.06 million and FDI component of US$ 510.72 million.

Hong Kong and Angola followed next with investors from both countries participating in a project with an investment value of US$ 364.49 million. The FDI component is US 275.75 million.