ACCRA, April 23 The impact of the outbreak of COVID-19 pushed Ghana’s economy near contraction, said the Ghana Statistical Service in its annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures released on Wednesday.
The West African country’s economic growth slowed to a marginal 0.4 percent growth year on year in 2020, slightly lower than the 0.9 percent revised projection for the year, as the pandemic outbreak took a heavy toll on economic activities.
The 2020 economic growth rate which was the lowest in the last 38 years was also 6.1 percentage points lower than the 6.5 percent year-on-year GDP growth rate recorded a year earlier.
Samuel Kobina Annim, the Government Statistician, attributed the sharp drop in GDP output to the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak which made growth slump in the second and third quarters of the year under review.
The West African country recorded GDP growth rates of -3.2 percent, -1.1 percent, and 3.3 percent in the second, third and fourth quarters respectively, after growing 4.9 percent in the first quarter.
“The agriculture sector led the overall performance with 7.4 percent and the services sector recorded a GDP growth rate of 1.5 percent year on year. The industries sector, however, contracted by -3.6 percent year on year,” said the government statistician.
Ghana had cut its growth projection for 2020 to 0.9 percent year on year from the initial 6.79 percent projection in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy.
Meanwhile, the country’s producer inflation increased by 13 percent in March after increasing 10.3 percent the previous month, said the GSS.