Friday, 29 March

Economy picking up strongly – Ofori-Atta

Business
Ken Ofori-Atta

Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta has said after growing at 0.4 per cent in 2020, reflecting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy “picked up strongly in Q1-2021 reflecting the impact  of  the  COVID-19  containment  measures  and  recovery  interventions the government has been implementing since COVID-19 broke out in March 2020”. 

Presenting the mid-year budget review to parliament on Thursday, 29 July 2021, Mr Ofori-Atta said: “Mr.  Speaker,  provisional  Q1-2021  National  Accounts  Statistics  published  by Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in June 2021 shows that the overall real GDP growth  for  Q1-2021  was  3.1  per cent”.    

This  shows  a  continuous recovery  momentum  from  the  pandemic  from  Q4-2020  when  the  economy grew  by  3.3  per cent  after  it  contracted  by  5.7  per cent  in  Q2-2020  and  3.2 per cent  in  Q3-2020, he explained.    

Non-oil GDP, he added, “equally  picked  up  strongly  in  Q1-2021 growing at 4.6 per cent up from the Q4-2020 growth of 4.0 per cent”.  

The  real  sector  recovery, he said,  is  supported  by  recent  data  on  Bank  of  Ghana’s Composite Index of Economic Activity (CIEA), which registered strong annual growth of 33.1 per cent in May 2021, compared to a contraction of 10.2 per cent in the corresponding period of 2020. 

The key drivers of economic activity during the  period, according to Mr Ofori-Atta,  “include  a  base  drift  effect,  improvement  in  industrial  production, domestic consumption, pick-up in import activities, steady rise in construction activities, and a rise in air-passenger arrivals”.  

Mr Ofori-Atta noted that the agriculture  sector  continued  its  robust  performance  and  recorded  the highest growth of 4.3 per cent, followed by the Services Sector and the Industry sector, which expanded by 4.0 per cent and 1.3 per cent, respectively. 

“For the same period in 2020, the Agriculture sector, services sector, and the Industry sector recorded growth rates of 10.2 per cent, 12.3 per cent, and 1.4 per cent, respectively”. 

The main drivers of growth in  the agriculture sector were  the livestock and the  crops  sub-sectors,  which  expanded  by  5.5  per cent  and  4.9  per cent, respectively, he added. 

The “fishing sub-sector, however, witnessed a contraction of 3.6 per cent  for  the  period”, he pointed out. 

The  growth  performance  in  the  services  sector, he said,  was spearheaded by the Information and Communication sub-sector which recorded a healthy growth rate of 22.1 per cent while Industry sector growth was powered by the Construction and Manufacturing sub-sectors, which grew by 14.2 per cent and 6.1 per cent, respectively.

Source: Classfmonline.com