Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ECONOMY OF GHANA
ST
LEVEL 300- 1
SEMESTER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. What Is Economic Growth? 2. Overview of the Ghanas Economy (1950-2000).
4. Conclusion.
5. References
necessary. It is therefore important to decompose the structure of Ghana's economy and its growth rate, to gain a better understanding of those factors that have produced differences in growth rates in the various periods.
their lands for money which they dont even invest in profitable ventures. During the period of 1950-2000, indigenous Ghanaians have focused attention on cocoa and neglected the chance of improving and promoting other agricultural produce. For example, increasing urbanization and a growing middle class has increased the demand for meat and processed foods but this demand has increasingly been supplied through imports, as evidenced by the surge in rice and chicken imported through the 1990s.
Manufacturing sector
Ghanas manufacturing is rising at 7.8% and is the 38th fastest industrial production in the world. After independence, the Nkrumah government launched an industrialisation drive that increased the manufacturing share of GDP from 10% in 1960 to 14% in 1970. During the 1960s, manufacturing grew at relatively high rates benefiting from a state-led development strategy that included import substitution. A series of largest industrial enterprises, including Volta Aluminum Company (Valco) smelter, saw mills and timber processing plants, cocoa processing plants, breweries, cement manufacturing, oil refining, textile manufacturing operations, and vehicle assembly plants were created in that period. However, this period of growth was followed by over a decade of deindustrialisation and most of these enterprises did not survive in an era of restrictive trade regimes that led to scarcity of foreign exchange to import necessary intermediates combined with poorly designed industrialisation policies and high protection barriers (Steel 1972; Dinye and Nyaba 2001; Ackah and Kutsoati 2008). Since independence there are about 5 foam manufacturers in 6hana,14 paint manufacturers ,23 pharmaceutical manufacturers and 29 plastic manufacturers. Only few Ghanaians own manufacturing companies in Ghana and have their market in eastern Asia and other foreign market. Also most home based manufacturers are large importers of raw materials. As at 2000 manufacturing employed about 134,692 or 67.3% of industrial employment in Ghana. During the period from 1950-2000, there was no improvement in the technology used in production neither were new ones invented by Ghanaians but rather the obsolete machines were used until the collapse of most of these state owned processing plants. Another failing aspect is Ghanaian handcraft which caught the international eye but has also been faced with the problem of obsolesce .Ghanaians who are into basket weaving and kente are still using the old ways of production (the hand) since inception. The automobile parts sector in the Suame magazine area of Ghana represents another example of homegrown manufacturing that has yet to play an important role in Ghanas transformation.
Service Sector
Ghana has so many service industries such as banks, investment services, healthcare services, education etc .The service sector has become the largest sources of employment since the 1950s.An estimated figure of 531,668 persons are engaged in the sector .The whole sale and retail subsectors employed the largest number of people in Accra (249,164) constitute 47% of service sector employment in 2000. Accra is the major center for marketing , finance, insurance, transportation and tourism.it has a central bank,9 commercial banks (with 81 branches,3 discount houses ,1 home finance mortgage bank, building societies, a stock market and 9 insurance companies as at 2000).there are about 526 private schools . Most of this service industries especially banks are not owned by Ghanaians except a few. Ghanaians are not therefore actively in ownership of the service industry in Ghana. However Ghanaians provide skills and expertise to the service industries to achieve economic goals
Since the paradigm shift in technology in 1994, however, the computers used in Ghana are all shipped from foreign countries .These computers are old and recycled then sent to Ghana which we buy at low cost e.g. old televisions ,radios ,mobile phones ,monitors etc. are been shipped to Ghana every day and the habour is choked with such items. No single computer has been made in Ghana yet except the parts are imported and assembled in Ghana. Tools and machinery used in the construction of infrastructure in the country are relatively obsolete .Ghanaians are merely beneficiaries of technology not inventors and not inventors.
Over exploitation of the resources endowed in Ghana and the inability of Ghanaians to tap the resources have rendered Ghanaians being put out of the process. Education in Ghana had being under-utilized in a sense that educated Ghanaians did not come up with any new thing or added any value in terms of meeting diverse needs of the economy. Large proportions of graduates have the mind set of looking for jobs in a service sector neglecting the fact that the service sector is supposed to support the two major sectors (Agriculture and Manufacturing) and this has finally lead to the disproportionate performance of the agriculture and manufacturing sector as compared to the service sector in recent times.
REFERENCES
www.wikipedia.com www.ghanasem.org
www.aryeetey@ug.edu.gh