The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has announced a significant 7.2% growth in GDP for the third quarter of 2024 compared to Q3 2023. Excluding the contraction in the oil subsector, GDP grew by 7.7%. The strong growth is primarily driven by the 17.1% growth recorded in the Mining & Quarrying sub-sector within the Industry sector.

Another strong performance within Industry was Construction’s 10.3% expansion. Electricity and Manufacturing recorded 3.8% and 3.4% growth respectively, while Water & Sewerage and Oil contracted by 3% and 0.6% respectively. Overall industry grew by 10.4% and now makes up 32.6% of GDP.

The Agriculture sector grew by 5.4% despite recording a significant 26% drop in the Cocoa sub-sector and a 21.7% drop in the Fishing sector. The sector now contributes 24.5% to GDP. Crops and Livestock grew by 5.9% and 4.8% respectively while Forestry & Logging contracted by 4.4%.

Services remains dominant, contributing 42.9% to GDP led by a remarkable 17.1% growth in Information & Communication. Other notable growth sub-sectors were Financial and Insurance witj 7.8% and Public Administration & Defence with 7%. Services as a whole expanded by 6.4% as compared to Q3 2023.

The Q3 figures follow similarly strong growth figures in Q2 2024 also driven by mining. Investors will be keeping a keen eye on the growth figures as it could signal an improvement in the country’s ability to make payments on significant tranches of restructured bonds beginning from Q1 2025.