Economy of Ghana

economy2

KEY FACTS 2015

GNI: US$40.5 million

GNI p.c.: US$1480

GDP growth: 3.9% p.a. 2011–15

Inflation: 17.1% p.a. 2011–15


Ghana’s formerly strong economy was badly affected by a series of military coups and failed development plans. A highly protected economy and substantial state investment created a large manufacturing sector, which, by the 1980s, was becoming a heavy burden on national resources. While the economy depended heavily on the export of two commodities, gold and cocoa, it would remain vulnerable to fluctuations in world commodity prices and to poor harvests.

The economic situation began to improve with government austerity programmes in the late 1980s, but the early 1990s presented new difficulties including a decline in the international price of cocoa. Donors pledged substantial aid from 1993, in support of IMF-backed economic recovery and reform programmes, which aimed to diversify exports, control public expenditure and privatise a number of state-owned enterprises.

Ghana has benefited from the G8 debt-relief programme launched at the Gleneagles Summit in Scotland, UK, in July 2005.

From the mid-1990s, there followed a period of vigorous economic growth, only dipping below four per cent p.a. in 2000, when cocoa prices were weak and oil costs rising. After dipping once again to four per cent in 2009 in the global economic downturn, strong growth continued in 2010–14, generally at about eight per cent p.a., but, with the start of oil production in December 2010, it soared to 15 per cent in 2011. Keeping inflation under control, however, proved more challenging.

Mining

Gold and diamonds are the main mineral exports. There are large reserves of bauxite and manganese. Ghana’s aluminium smelter was closed in 2007. The government assumed ownership of the operating company, Valco, in 2010 and announced plans to rehabilitate it and establish a domestic aluminium industry.

Oil and gas

Significant discoveries of offshore oil were announced in 2007. Oil production began in December 2010 at a rate of 55,000 barrels a day and was at some 105,000 barrels a day by the latter part of 2012. As new wells come on stream, production was expected to rise rapidly. In 2015 the country was set to become a major gas producer too, with the opening of its first LNG plant – linked by pipeline to offshore field – with the capacity to produce 4.2 million cubic metres of gas a day.