Ghana's economy accelerates to fastest pace since 2019

Ghana’s economic growth accelerated in the third quarter to the fastest pace in almost five years after solid gains in the industrial sector.

Gross domestic product grew 7.2% in the three months through September from a year earlier, compared with a revised 7% increase in the prior quarter, Government Statistician Samuel Kobina Annim told reporters in the capital, Accra, on Wednesday.

It was the fastest pace of year-on-year growth since 7.9% was recorded in the fourth quarter of 2019, easily beating the median of three economists’ estimates in a Bloomberg survey for a 5.4% expansion.

The cedi rose 0.3% to almost a seven-month high of 14.7034 per dollar at 10:33 a.m. in the capital, Accra.

The data follows the election victory earlier this week of former President John Mahama, after voters rejected the incumbent administration amid anger over a cost-of-living crisis in the West African nation.

Ghana is exiting a prolonged debt restructuring and is in the second year of an International Monetary Fund program that’s included painful austerity measures.

The industrial sector grew by an annual 10.4% in the period after expanding 9.4% in the second quarter. That included a 17.1% increase by mining and quarrying, which expended for its fourth straight quarter.

Growth in the services sector picked up to 6.4% from 5.7%, helped by a 17.1% jump in the information and communications sector, while the pace of expansion in agriculture slowed to 3.2% from 6%.

The performance of agriculture, which employs an estimated 40% of the workforce, came as the cocoa sector contracted by 26%, the fifth consecutive quarter that it has shrunk.

Cocoa output by the world’s second-largest producer of the chocolate ingredient has suffered from a range of headwinds including bad weather, crop disease, a shortage of agricultural inputs, and the smuggling of beans over its borders, where they command a higher price.

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