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Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product growth in 2018 stood at a provisional 6.3 percent year-on-year, down from 8.1 percent in 2017, Professor Samuel Annim, the Government Statistician, announced on Wednesday.

Growth in the fourth quarter of 2018 was 6.8 percent compared to 5.5 percent in the third quarter, he said.

Professor Annim said the industry sector recorded a growth of 10.6 percent, followed by Agriculture 4.8 percent and the Services with 2.7 percent.

However, the services sector remains the largest with its share of GDP up to 46.3 percent last year from 46.0 percent in 2017.
Two of the sub-sectors, Information and Communications and the Health and Social Works recorded double digits growth of 13.1 percent and 22.6 percent respectively.

There was a contraction in the real estate sub-sector of 6.5 percent as well as finance and Insurance 8.2 percent.

The Industry Sector, the highest growing sector with a GDP share of 34.0 percent, had its growth rate down to 10.6 percent in 2018 from 15.7 percent in 2017.

Professor Annim said the decline could be attributed to the fall in the growth rate of the oil and gas activities from 80.3 percent in 2017 to 3.6 percent in 2018.

Mining and Quarrying sub-sector, on the other hand, recorded the highest growth of 23.3 percent.

The agriculture sector expanded by 4.8 percent in 2018 compared to a growth rate of 6.1 percent in 2017. The sector’s share of GDP declined from 21.1 percent in 2017 to 19.7 percent in 2018.

Crops were the second largest activity in Ghana with a share of 14.5 percent of GDP, while the fishing sub-sector continued to contract, recording a GDP growth rate of negative 6.8 percent in 2018 compared to negative 1.4 percent in 2017.

The non-oil annual GDP growth rate increased to 6.5 percent in 2018 from 4.6 percent in 2017 on account of a 49 percent growth rate in Mining and Quarrying activities, information and communications as well as health and social works activities.