Ghana generates over 80% of its export revenues from three primary commodities – gold, crude oil and cocoa exports. It is classified by UNCTAD as commodity dependent, making it vulnerable to sharp drops in commodity prices.<\/p>\n
Since the COVID-19 pandemic demand for oil dropped precipitously due to a sudden reduction in industrial production, trade, travel, and movement of freight. Prices fell dramatically as a result.<\/p>\n
Revenues from the newly established oil and gas industry have had a profound impact on Ghana’s macroeconomy, even though oil and gas accounted for just 3.8% of Ghana’s GDP in 2018.<\/p>\n
Cocoa, a key ingredient in chocolate, a luxury food product, has also seen a decline in demand. Ghana is the second largest cocoa bean supplier globally, with an estimated 1 million Ghanaian smallholder farmers and their communities depending directly on cocoa for their livelihoods.<\/p>\n
The only commodity that did well of Ghana’s main exports was gold. The country is the largest gold producer in Africa . Demand \u2013 and the price \u2013 of gold increased.<\/p>\n
Ghana achieved strong economic growth in terms of real GDP in the 2000s and reached lower middle-income status in November 2010. Middle-income countries generally have a diversified economic structure but Ghana remains heavily dependent on primary commodity exports for foreign exchange earnings.<\/p>\n
As a result the impact of the fall in the price of oil and cocoa has been severe. Ghana’s credit rating was downgraded to B- in September 2020 and the International Monetary Fund approved the disbursement of US$1 billion to improve con\ufb01dence of the country’s creditors. At the end of 2020, GDP growth was confirmed at 0.9% .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ghana generates over 80% of its export revenues from three primary commodities – gold, crude oil and cocoa exports. It is classified by UNCTAD as commodity dependent, making it vulnerable to sharp drops in commodity prices. Since the COVID-19 pandemic demand for oil dropped precipitously due to a sudden reduction in industrial production, trade, travel, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":9492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-economy","category-homepage-english"],"yoast_head":"\n