The government is now targeting an overall real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 2.8% in 2023.
This is higher than the earlier 1.8% and the 1.5% and 1.6% projected by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Non-Oil real GDP is estimated to grow at an average rate of 2.1%.
Presenting the 2024 Budget, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, said real GDP growth averaged 3.2% in first half of 2023 compared to 2.9% in same period in 2022, signalling a strong rebound.
“Robust growth in the Services (average. 6.3%) and Agriculture (average. 6.2%) sectors were the key drivers”, he stressed.
The Finance Minister said “The macroeconomic adjustment policies under the IMF-supported PC-PEG, combined with wide-ranging reforms and the comprehensive debt exchange programme, are yielding the right outcomes as we see clear signs of economic stabilisation and recovery”.
Provisional estimates from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) show that the overall real GDP growth rate for the first half of 2023 was 3.2%, compared with 2.9% for the same period in 2022.
The growth of non-oil real GDP was 3.9% over the period, the same as in 2022.
Growth in the Agriculture sector increased from 4.3% in the first half of 2022
to 6.3% over the same period in 2023.
The increased growth was mainly driven by the Crops and Livestock sub-sectors, which both recorded growth rates of 6.8%, compared with 3.8% and 5.7%, respectively, recorded in the first half of 2022.
The Industry sector, however, contracted by 2.2% in the first half of the year, driven by
contractions in all sub-sectors except Mining and Quarrying. This contrasts with a growth of
1.9% for the same period in 2022.
Growth in the Services sector in the first half of 2023 was also estimated at 6.3%, compared with 5.0% for the same period in 2022.
Following the trend in recent years, the Information and Communication sub-sector recorded the highest growth rate over the period, 23.2%, compared to 20.1% over the same period in the preceding year. This was followed by Health and Social Work, with a growth of 11.9%, compared to 9.3% over the same period in 2022.