The real quarterly gross domestic product (GDP), increased by 6.8 percent on a year on year basis in the fourth quarter of 2018, compared to 5.5 percent recorded for the same period in 2017.
This translates into a real GDP estimate of GHc39, 473.2 million compared to GHc36, 950.8 million in the same period of 2017.
The non-oil GDP growth rate for fourth quarter 2018 was 8.4 percent compared to 1.7 percent for the same period in 2017, translating into GHc 36,093.9 million compared to GHc 33,309.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2017.
The Industry sector recorded the highest growth of 8.9 percent; the Services sector followed with 5.8 percent and then Agriculture with 4.4 percent.
According to the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), the main drivers of the growth in the fourth quarter GDP were the Mining and Quarrying, Health and Social Work, Information and Communication, Trade, Repair of Vehicles, and Household Goods sub-sectors.
The Mining and Quarrying sub-sector grew by 20.0 percent during the 12 month period, slowing from 35.9 percent in the same period in 2017 mainly due to a decline in oil and gas production of -7.2 percent. About 2.9 million barrels of oil were shipped within the quarter, a little below the 3 million barrels of oil shipped in the previous quarter.
The Health and Social Work sub-sector increased by 12.5 percent for quarter four of 2018 also slowing from a 25.9 percent increase in the previous one year period.
Information and Communication sub-sector growth also slowed from 25 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017 to an increase of 12.3 percent in the same period of 2018.
The Trade, Repair of Vehicles, Household Goods sub-sector also slowed slightly to 8.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018 from 9.8 percnet in quarter 4 01’2017.
Negative contributors to the GDP growth came from the sub-sectors of Fishing (-49.1 percent), Water Supply, Sewerage, Waste Management and Remediation Activities (-7.3 percent), Real estate (-3.1 percent) and Forestry and logging (-1.1 percent)
By Joshua W. Amlanu