Revenue from Ghana’s Non-Traditional Export earnings from January to December 2020 amounted to US$2.846billion, the Ghana Export Promotions Authority (GEPA) has announced.
The amount indicates a decline of -1.84 percent over the 2019 earnings of US$2.899billion, with GEPA associating the minimal dip to the impact of COVID-19 on global trade. The fall, GEPA said, was due to a downward trend in the processed and semi-processed product sector’s performance, particularly cocoa-butter and canned tuna.
GEPA’s CEO, Dr. Afua Asabea Asare, speaking at a brief ceremony to announce the report on the analysis of Non-Traditional Export statistics, described the performance as appreciable considering ravages of the pandemic – whereon the World Trade Organisation indicated that global economic activities declined between 13-32 percent due to effects of the virus.
She reiterated GEPA’s commitment to ensuring that the ambitious US$25.3billion revenue target stipulated in the National Export Development Strategy (NEDS) is achieved by 2029 with minimal concern to COVID-19.
“We remain committed to ensuring product transformation and value addition in alignment with the NEDS to achieve the set target by 2029. It may seem daunting, but with a collaborative approach with the necessary stakeholders Ghana will win,” she said.
Performance of key subsectors
The manufacturing subsector of the NTEs, comprising processed and semi-processed products, accounted for 83.71 percent and amounted to US$2.38billion in 2020, compared to US$2.46billion in 2019 – constituting a fall of 2.94 percent.
The agricultural subsector recorded a 0.65 percent rise in its performance from 2019 with a total contribution of 15.21 percent to the NTEs in 2020. This, in monetary terms, translated to US$430million in 2019 and to US$433million in 2020.
Meanwhile, industrial art and craft experienced growth – accounting for 1.08 percent of total NTEs and depicting an overwhelming increase of 110.88 percent over the 2019 year earnings.
The top-10 earners of the NTEs include cocoa paste, cocoa butter, cashew nut, articles of plastics, canned tuna, iron and steel, shea, refined palm oil, cocoa powder and natural rubber sheets in that order.
Explaining the subsector performance of these products, Deputy Director of Services and Manufacturers at GEPA, Banda Abdallah, said cocoa paste outperformed cocoa butter as the highest earner, with natural rubber sheets being the lowest earner among the top-ten leading products.
Cocoa paste and natural rubber earned US$463.41million and US$73.60million respectively with an average earnings of the top-ten earners being US$170.37million. Indeed, the total value of the top-10 leading products amounted to over US$1.7billion representing 59.85 percent of total NTE earnings for 2020.
Cocoa paste, which was the biggest earner among the NTEs, contributed 16.50 percent while natural rubber sheets contributed 2.62 percent. Cashew nut was the only agricultural product that showed up in the top-ten leading products, with the rest all being processed and semi-processed products.
