Economy grew by 5.6% in third quarter of 2019 - Government Statistician

The country’s economy grew a provisional 5.6 per cent for the third quarter of 2019 year-on-year compared to the 7.4% recorded in the same period in 2018, the Government Statistician has said.

According to Professor Samuel Annim, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate without oil and gas for the same period was 4.6% compared to 8.5% in 2018.

He said the Agriculture sector recorded the highest growth of 5.9%, while the industry and Services sectors both expanded by 5.7%.

The Services sector remained the largest sector of the Ghanaian economy in the third quarter of 2019 with a share of 45.8% of GDP.

Industry and Agriculture had 35.7% and 18.5% share of GDP respectively.

Under the services sector, Information and Communication sub-sector grew by 5.5% in the third quarter of 2019 compared to 11.5% in the second quarter of 2019.

The real Estate also expanded by 5.6% in the third quarter up from 3.8% in the second quarter.

“There is no contraction in the growth of any of the sub-sectors within the service sector,” Prof. Annim said.

Within the industry sector, electricity sub-sector recorded 2.7%, up from negative 1.9 per cent growth recorded in the second quarter of 2019.

Mining and Quarrying sub-sector slowed to 2.2% in the third quarter of 2019 compared to 3.4% in 2019, while the manufacturing sub-sector grew by 1.2%.

Construction recorded a growth rate of 0.4% during the period compared to negative 2.1% in the second quarter.

In the agriculture sector, the crops sub-sector grew by 1.7% compared to 0.8% in the previous quarter.

Livestock sub-sector grew by 1.1%.

Forestry and logging sub-sector recorded the least growth rate of negative 0.2%.