Government targets 2.8% GDP growth in 2024

The government is now targeting an overall real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 2.8% in 2023.

This is higher than the earlier 1.8% and the 1.5% and 1.6% projected by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Non-Oil real GDP is estimated to grow at an average rate of 2.1%.

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Presenting the 2024 Budget, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, said real GDP growth averaged 3.2% in first half of 2023 compared to 2.9% in same period in 2022, signalling a strong rebound.

“Robust growth in the Services (average. 6.3%) and Agriculture (average. 6.2%) sectors were the key drivers”, he stressed.

The Finance Minister said “The macroeconomic adjustment policies under the IMF-supported PC-PEG, combined with wide-ranging reforms and the comprehensive debt exchange programme, are yielding the right outcomes as we see clear signs of economic stabilisation and recovery”.

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Provisional estimates from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) show that the overall real GDP growth rate for the first half of 2023 was 3.2%, compared with 2.9% for the same period in 2022.

The growth of non-oil real GDP was 3.9% over the period, the same as in 2022.

Growth in the Agriculture sector increased from 4.3% in the first half of 2022
to 6.3% over the same period in 2023.

The increased growth was mainly driven by the Crops and Livestock subsectors, which both recorded growth rates of 6.8%, compared with 3.8% and 5.7%, respectively, recorded in the first half of 2022.

The Industry sector, however, contracted by 2.2% in the first half of the year, driven by
contractions in all subsectors except Mining and Quarrying. This contrasts with a growth of
1.9% for the same period in 2022.

Growth in the Services sector in the first half of 2023 was also estimated at 6.3%, compared with 5.0% for the same period in 2022.

Following the trend in recent years, the Information and Communication subsector recorded the highest growth rate over the period, 23.2%, compared to 20.1% over the same period in the preceding year. This was followed by Health and Social Work, with a growth of 11.9%, compared to 9.3% over the same period in 2022.