The Statistics Department said on Wednesday, December 21, 2022 that Ghana's economic growth slowed to 2.9% year-on-year in the third quarter of this year, compared with 6.6% in the same period last year, its worst performance since the first quarter of 2021.

While Ghana is struggling with rampant inflation, a depreciated local currency, and spiraling debt, growth has slowed since the post-Covid pandemic resumed in 2021. Indeed, the country, which is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a generation, defaulted on most of its external debt on Monday.

The government has negotiated a $3 billion deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to try to stabilize the economy. Its approval is conditional on a complete restructuring of the debt. According to Samuel Kobina Annim, the government statistician, that the third-quarter growth figure was the lowest since the economy grew by 3.1% in the first quarter of 2021.

In reality, in the third quarter of this year, growth was supported by the agricultural sector, where most of the growth came from fishing. Industry, for its part, saw the weakest growth, with its manufacturing subsector decreasing by 7.4% but mining increasing by 14.9%. The country revised growth for the first quarter of this year to 3% and 4.7% for the second quarter, compared with 3.3% and 4.8% respectively according to Annim.