Economic growth in Ghana dipped 1.8 percentage points to 5.6 percent in the third quarter (Q3) of 2019, compared with the 7.4 percent recorded during the same quarter last year, the Ghana Statistical Service announced here on Monday.
This reduction became the fourth straight time the economic growth of Ghana slacked after it started reducing in the fourth quarter of 2018.
The Government statistician Samuel Kobina Annim attributed the slower growth in the economy to the poor performance of the mining sector, among others.
“Consistently, there has been a continuous drop in both the production and value addition of gold,” Annim said.
Gold production recorded a 19 percent decrease in the third quarter, after a drop of 11 percent in the second quarter, added the statistician.
Annim added that the 1000 percent increase recorded in manganese production over the first and second quarters of 2019 had slumped to two percent in the third quarter.
The agriculture sector recorded the highest annual growth rate of 5.9 percent during the period under review, while both the services sector and the industry sector recorded a year-on-year GDP growth rate of 5.7 percent.
The over-all economy without oil production declined 3.9 percentage points to 4.6 percent in the third quarter, compared with the 8.5 percent growth recorded in the same quarter last year.
Meanwhile, oil production, which has become the main catalyst of Ghana’s economic growth, has also slowed down with the Jubilee field producing below capacity.
In a related development, Ghana’s industry inflation increased one percentage point to 9.9 percent in November, compared with the 8.9 percent inflation in October. Enditem
