Ghana has cemented its position as the most attractive destination for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), ahead of neighbouring Nigeria, by attracting FDI commitments to the tune of well over US$ 3.5 billion in 2018.

Indeed, the actual FDI figures for the year could be considerably higher since data from the Petroleum Commission, Minerals Commission and the Ghana Free Zones Board, only covers the first three quarters of the year. It is possible that the Petroleum Commission’s figures could have risen considerably during the last quarter of 2018 due to the intensity of Aker Energy’s exploratory drilling programme during that period which indeed culminated in the announcement of the largest single oil find in the entire West African Gulf of Guinea to date, a few weeks ago.

Full year figures from the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), the country’s flagship FDI facilitation agency proved that 2017’s record breaking performance was not a fluke. In 2017, the Centre attracted FDI commitments to the tune of US$3,614.07 million, and adding on local counterpart investment, this brought the total investment commitments registered with it to US$3,745.60 million. Despite this being the highest FDI registered in the 24 year history of the GIPC cynics argued that it was only achieved because of one single investment commitment of over US$2 billion made during the year.

However, in 2018, GIPC nearly matched the previous year’s performance, registering US$3,324.42 million in commitments and with local counterpart commitments added on, a total of US$3,540.73 million.

Instructively, the highest single investment registered is for US$1,417.58 million and indeed two investments are for over US$1 billion each.

But the level of total investment commitments for 2018 (full year for GIPC but first nine months for the other agencies) at US$3,676.49 million is likely to fall short of the US$6,189.68 million (full year for all for agencies) because of sharp declines by the Petroleum Commission, Minerals Commission and GFZB which only registered commitments during the first three quarters of the year, to the tunes of US$134 million, US$770,000 and US$990,000 respectively, down from 2017’s full year levels of US$493.86 million, US$549.59 million and US$1,400.63 million respectively.

Importantly, commitments generated by GIPC are expected to create 17,924 jobs, up from 13,108 jobs in 2017.

For 2018, GIPC attracted commitments to the tune of US$1,417.58 million for the service sector expected to generate 7,780 jobs; US$1,101.87 million for the general trade sector, expected to create 1,687 jobs; US$715.41 million for the manufacturing sector, expected to generate 4,859 jobs; US$137.51 million for export trade expected to generate 217 jobs; US$93.66 million for the building and construction sector expected to generate 259 jobs; US$65.65 million for liaison offices, generating 2,086 jobs; and US$8.91 million for the agricultural sector, to generate 946 jobs.