Ghana to rebase economy to capture new trends

Preparations are far advanced for Ghana to rebase its National Accounts (Economy) this year after the last rebasing in 2010, Acting Government Statistician, Baah Wadieh, disclosed here on Wednesday.

In an interview after the release of December 2017 Consumer Price Index and Inflation, the head of the national statistical office explained that the rebasing, which is a requirement after every five years, would take care of new developments in the economy.

“This rebasing will reflect the real state of the economy, using 2013 as the base year. There is the need to factor in the entire production process in the country,” he added.

The official explained that although some portions of petroleum production had been factored into the economy since oil production started in December 2010, the rebasing would capture the entire scope of oil production from the upstream through midstream to downstream.

“Also communication and mobile telephony, together with internet use, had not developed this much at the last rebasing. All these other sectors, including new infrastructure, new technology, new investments, services and agriculture have all seen substantial changes which need to be factored into the economy,” Wadieh added.

Ghana’s economy increased by 60 percent when the last rebasing was announced in 2010, making the country a Lower Middle Income Economy, but since then, support by Development Partners for Ghana’s budget implementation has dwindled.

Ghana has over the years used a system which dates back to 1993 to calculate its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but Wadieh said the 2018 rebasing would afford the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) the opportunity to employ global best practice with latest technology to calculate the national accounts.

“We have previously been using the expenditure approach only to calculate GDP but with this rebasing we are going to use all three approaches of expenditure; income and production to determine the full size of the national accounts,” according to the head of the national statistical department.

He said the work was scheduled to be completed in June while consultation and validation processes were carried out before final announcement.