Business Times Africa Magazine 2017 /vol 9/ No2 BT2Edition2017_web

GHANA Akufo-Addo’s ‘One District, One Factory’ draws investors By Obed Attah Yeboah G hana’s industrial sector, which as recently as 2011 used to be the largest contributor to the West Africa country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), has seen its fortunes dwindle in the past few years. The sector grew at a rate of 19.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011, in- creased further to 42.5 percent in the second quarter and further jumped to 54.4 and 50.7 percent respectively in the third and fourth quarters. Today, the sector’s growth has tak- en a nose dive. The quarterly GDP fig- ures released by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in April show that the sector recorded a year-on-year annu- al GDP growth rate of -1.4percent for 2016. It is now contributing only 24.2 percent to GDP and has been taken over by the services sector, which now contributes to 53.2 percent. The sector’s woes are worsened by the manufacturing sub-sector which has also performed abysmally in recent years. The sub-sector, last year, recorded the lowest growth of -1.1 percent in quarter 4, although it ended the year at 2.7percent. The above situation has largely contributed to the high rate of youth unemployment in the country. A 2016 World Bank report dubbed: “Landscape of Jobs in Ghana” said 48 percent of Ghanaian youth are unem- ployed. This, the Institute of Social, Statis- tical and Economic Research (ISSER) 22 Business Times Africa | 2017 of the Unive rsity of Ghana, has called a time bomb. The Association of Ghana Indus- tries (AGI), the umbrella body for manufacturing industries, has per- sistently warned that if deliberate policies are not implemented by gov- ernment to revive the manufacturing sub-sector, the industrial sector will continue to shrink and Ghana risks losing its industrial base. There are a lot of people who are now asking questions about what they can do, where they can find information about what is available in the districts in terms of raw materials

Business Times Africa Magazine 2017 /vol 9/ No2 BT2Edition2017_web | Page 24