Armyworms affected Q2 GDP – Economist

An economist with Data Bank, Courage Martey, has blamed the invasion of Armyworms on farmlands for the poor performance of the Agriculture sector in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the second quarter.

According to him, the invasion of these worms in the early part of this year destroyed most farmlands, thereby impacting negatively on the Agriculture sector.

Figures released by the Ghana Statistical Service revealed that, the industry sector recorded the highest growth of 19.3 per cent, followed by the services sector with 5.6 per cent whiles the Agriculture sector recorded the lowest with 3.4 per cent.

Speaking in an interview with Class Business’ Pious Kojo Backah, Mr Martey said government must quickly put in strategic policies to accelerate the growth of the sector.

“How many ordinary Ghanaians are employed in the oil and gas sector? It is good that the oil and gas sector is recovering but the immediate impact on the pocket of the Ghanaian is doubtful right now so if you have agriculture not catching up or doing not quite well in this space, we need to look at the numbers again…,” he stated.

He continued: “For me, it is good the headline numbers are showing a recovery in critical sectors of the economy but what figures like agriculture is giving us shows that there is a lot of work still to be done.

“Maybe this is the negative impact of the army worm infestation we experienced at the earlier part of the year. Because if you look at the crop sub sector, that sector also grew by 8.3 per cent which is lower than the 9.2 per cent we saw in the first quarter of this year.

It is a case for government to start accelerating some of its policy implementation.

So I believe that this is where government may want to look at quickly accelerating implementation and getting rid of bottle necks in the process so that you can reduce the timeline between policy implementation and policy effectiveness before we start looking at other aspects of the value chain.”