Ghana’s Economic Growth Slows to 12% as Oil Target Missed
January 25, 2012, 6:21 AM ESTBy Moses Mozart Dzawu
Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Ghana’s economic growth slowed to 12 percent in the third quarter of 2011 as oil output in the West African nation missed a production target.
Gross domestic production eased from a revised 17.6 percent in the second quarter, Philomena Nyarko, a statistician at the Ghana Statistical Service, told reporters in Accra, the capital, today. The median forecast of three analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was 13.8 percent.
“Oil production did not materialize,” Stephen Bailey- Smith, an emerging-markets strategist at Standard Bank in London said by phone Jan. 9. “It still hovered around 85,000 barrels per day against an initial 120,000 barrels per day estimate.”
Ghana began pumping oil for export from the Jubilee field in December 2010, spurring growth in the world’s second-largest cocoa producer. Tullow Oil Plc said on Nov. 9 production at the field had been below expectations because of “temporary technical issues.”
Economic growth will likely slow to 9.4 percent this year from 13.6 percent in 2011, Finance Minister Kwabena Duffuor said in November. The central bank kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 12.5 percent for a third meeting on Dec. 21.
The Bank of Ghana may keep the rate on hold again in February, before the government’s 2012 budget spending plans take a greater effect, Bailey-Smith said.
--Editors: Emily Bowers, Nasreen Seria
To contact the reporter on this story: Moses Mozart Dzawu in Accra at mdzawu@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net.
