Ghana's economy including oil and gas have increased by 4.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2023 compared to 3.0 recorded the same period last year.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate without oil and gas (non-oil GDP) from January to March this year also grew by 5.5 per cent as compared to 3.7 per cent.
The increase was driven by the services, public administration and the agricultural sectors, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has announced.
The GSS disclosed a positive development in the country's real GDP with a 1.1 per cent increase in the first quarter surpassing the previous quarter's record by 0.3 percentage point.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra yesterday, the Government Statistician, Professor Samuel K. Anim said "this is the highest GDP growth in the last four quarters."
He said the GDP (including oil and gas) estimated at current prices for the first quarter of the year was GH¢48,863.7 million compared to GH¢46,877.1 million same period last year.
For non-oil GDP, he mentioned that prices stood at GH¢46,548.2 million as against GH¢44,113.8 million for the first quarter of 2022.
The Government Statistician said the current prices in purchaser value for the first quarter of this year was GH¢202.628.6 million compared to GH¢141,116.0 million last year while that of non-oil was GH¢193, 535.8 million compared to GH¢133,234.5 million recorded the previous year.
According to Prof. Anim, the services sector continue to be the largest sector of the economy with a share of 47 per cent of GDP at basic prices with the GDP share of industry and agriculture pegged at 32 and 21 per cent respectively.
The agriculture sector expanded by 1.3 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared to 1.0 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2022.
He explained that within the agricultural sector, the livestock sub-sector decreased by 0.1 percentage points from 1.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year to 1.6 per cent in first quarter of 2023, adding that in the first quarter of 2023, the growth of crops and cocoa sub-sector slightly improved, growing at 1.4 per cent compared to 1.0 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2022.
"The forestry and logging sub-sector decreased marginally by 0.3 percentage points from 0.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year to 0.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2023," he stated.
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Within the industry sector, Prof. Anim said the mining and quarrying sub-sector dropped from 3.2 per cent on the 2022 to -0.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2023.
He explained that, electricity sub sector had a growth of 0.9 per cent in the first quarter of this year as compared to -3.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2022 with the manufacturing sub-sector slightly improving to -0.7 per cent from -2.5 per cent recorded in the last quarter of 2022.
He mentioned that, for the services sector, information and communication sub-sector slowed to 4.4 per cent in the first quarter of this year from 5.0 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2022.
"Public Administration, defense and social security, health and social work activities and education recorded growth rates of 8.3 per cent, 7.3 per cent and 5.7 per cent respectively in the quarter one of 2023 from 3.7 per cent, 2.2 per cent and 3.0 per cent in the last quarter of 2023.
