Ghana to miss 7.1% growth target

This is because Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate for the third quarter of the year was 5.6%.

This means that Ghana will need a growth rate of about 10.0% in the fourth quarter of 2019 to meet its GDP target for the entire year. This requires key sectors like the construction, financial services and manufacturing to contribute significantly to that growth.

However, this seems practically impossible.

Economic Analyst Courage Martey told Accra-based Class FM that “for 2019, I think it is late in the day because we are already in December and any policy implementation right now to achieve that 7.0% target for end-2019 will only spillover into the 2020 growth numbers.”

“If you look at critical areas that are struggling to pull up, you look at the construction sub-sector, the growth numbers are not quite impressive after contracting in the first two quarters”, adding that they “have assumed positive growth but then the construction sector need to grow strongly and that is where we have contractors getting their payment and we are having liquidity being injected into the economy”, he added.

He encouraged the government to work tirelessly on the Sinohydro project, in getting the construction sector busy and growing.

Ghana’s economy grew by 5.6% in the third quarter of this year. In the same period last year, the growth rate was 7.4%.

Without oil, the Gross Domestic Product of the country for the third quarter of 2019 stood at 4.6%.

Meanwhile, provisional data available on the performance of the economy as of the end of September 2019 show that most of the macroeconomic indicators are on target.