Adnan Adams Mohammed
The Ghana Statistical Service has announced that the Ghanaian economy shrunk by 0.3 percent to record 3.3 percent in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the 3.6% recorded in the same period of 2021.
The 2022 first quarter growth is the second slowest growth rate the country recorded since 2020 after the -3.3 percent growth recorded in the third quarter of 2020.
Also, when seasonally adjusted, Ghana’s real GDP increased by 0.9% in quarter one of 2022; which is 1 percentage points lower than what was recorded in quarter four of 2021. However, Non-oil Gross Domestic product, which looks at economic growth without oil, also expanded by 3.7 percent.
“The services sector remains the largest sector of the economy with a 45 percent share of GDP while that of Industry was 32 percent and Agriculture 23 percent”, Professor Samuel Annim, the Government Statistician, indicated during a press briefing in Accra, Last week.
The information and communication sub sector was the major driver of this growth with one percent increase.
Followed by the Crops and Cocoa sub-sector (0.9%), Transport and Storage sub-sector (0.4%), Manufacturing sub-sector (0.3%) and Trade: Repair of Vehicles, Household goods sub-sector (0.3%).
Overall, the year-on-year quarterly GDP growth rate for Agriculture was 5.6 percent for the first quarter of 2022 with the fishing sub-sector recording the highest year-on-year growth rate of 26.1 percent while the Forestry & Logging sub-sector recorded the lowest, with a contraction of 0.5 percent.
The year-on-year quarterly GDP growth rate for the Industry sector is 1.3 percent for the first quarter of 2022.
The Water Supply, Sewerage, Waste Management & Remediation Activities sub-sector recorded the highest year-on-year quarterly GDP growth rate of 25.4 percent for 2022, while the Construction sub-sector recorded the lowest, with a contraction of negative 2.6 percent.
For the first quarter of 2022, the Services sector recorded a year-on-year quarterly GDP growth rate of 3.7 percent.
On a year-on-year basis, the Information & Communication sub-sector recorded the highest year-on-year quarterly GDP growth rate of 26.6 percent while the Professional, Administrative & Support Service activities sub-sector recorded the lowest growth of negative 12.8 percent.
The sub-sectors that contracted were Professional, Administrative & Support (-12.8), Public Administration & Defence, Social Security (-9.8%), Real Estate (-2.6%), Education (-2.0%) and Health & Social Work (-1.0%).
