Business News of Tuesday, 29 January 2019
Source: citibusinessnews.com
2019-01-29
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Figures from the Bank of Ghana(BoG) have shown that Ghana’s exports increased significantly between 2017 and 2018.
Substantial improvement in Ghana’s export receipts from oil, helped in adding more than USD 1 Billion dollars to Ghana’s export figures for 2018.
The country in 2017 saw total exports reach USD 13.835 billion dollars, whereas in 2018 the country exported goods worth USD 14.868 billion dollars.
This represents an increase of 7.5 percent in exports over the period.
Total imports also witnessed an increase in 2018 as compared to imports in 2017. From USD 12.647 billion dollars recorded in 2017 total imports increased by 3.5 percent to USD 13.089 billion dollars.
As a result, Ghana’s trade figures for 2018 show that the country recorded a trade surplus of USD 1.7 billion dollars. This translates into 2.7 percent of the country’s GDP for 2018.
The Central Banks’s latest economic data show that the country’s increased exports was largely driven by the oil sector.
Receipts from oil exports increased from USD 3.1 billion dollars in 2017 to USD 4.5 billion dollars in 2018. Gold exports on the other hand witnessed a marginal decline from USD 5.7 billion dollars exported in 2017 to USD 5.4 billion dollars exported in 2018. This represents a decline of 5.6 percent.
Cocoa just like gold also saw a decline in exports for 2018. While cocoa exports for 2017 stood at USD 2.6 billion dollars, the figure for 2018 dropped significantly by 21.4 percent to USD 2.09 billion dollars for 2018.
Between December 2017 and the same period last year, a barrel of oil went down by 11.8 percent from an average of 61.19 dollars in December of 2017 to 53.96 dollars in December 2018.
Also, the price for an ounce of fine gold reduced for the period by 1.1 percent; from 1,264 dollars to 1,250 dollars. However the average monthly price of cocoa increased by 15 percent for the same period. A tonne of cocoa ended 2018 at an average price of 2,208 dollars compared to the 1917 dollars recorded December 2017.
