The Ghanaian economy recorded its strongest quarterly growth since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. Data from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), the national statistics service, shows an increase of 6.6% in the third quarter of 2021, a far cry from the 3.9% recorded between April and June.
“This 6.6% growth rate that we recorded for the third quarter of 2021 is the closest we have to the pre-2020 period, when the pandemic was about to set in,” said the government statistician, Samuel Kobina Annim, this week facing the press. This figure “brings us closer to the GDP growth rate that we recorded during the pre-Covid-19 era, bearing in mind that we recorded a growth rate of 9% in the first quarter of 2019”, a he added.
According to data from the GSS, growth was mainly driven between July and September 2021 by the sectors of education (+ 24.2%), health and social works (+ 20.5%), information and communication (+ 17%), hotels and restaurants (+ 16.4%) and agriculture (+ 9.2%), among others. On the other hand, the industrial sector contracted by 2% due to the significant contraction of the mining sub-sector.
Africa’s eighth-largest economy, Ghana has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. In a statement released last July, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast growth of 4.7% of GDP in 2021, after slowing to 0.4% in 2020. For its part, public debt has climbed to reach 79% of GDP in 2020.
