According to the Ghana Statistical Service, Ghana recorded a trade surplus in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024. Specifically, a total of 59.5 billion Ghana Cedis worth of goods were exported while 48.1 billion Ghana Cedis worth of goods were imported.

Gold accounted for 50% of the exported goods, followed by mineral fuels and oils and cocoa beans and products accounting for 21% and 12.1% respectively.

For imports, mineral fuels and oils accounted for 29.3% while machinery and electrical equipment accounted for 14.6% followed by chemical products accounting for 10.9%.

This follows the 2023 trend where Ghana recorded a trade surplus of 5.3 billion Ghana Cedis after recording 186 billion Ghana Cedis in exports and 180.7 billion Ghana Cedis in imports for the entire year.

Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, the government statistician explained how the country overcame a trade deficit in 2023 while highlighting key areas for attention.

“Indeed in the case of 2022, if we all recall what happened within our macroeconomic space, we had exchange rate challenges and this was mainly driven by the importation of mineral fuels and oils, that is why we saw the high prices for our mineral fuels and oils because of the exchange rate challenges that we had, upping our import rates and making us record a deficit in 2022. Once we turned this around in 2023, then we saw a surplus of 5.3 billion Ghana Cedis, that is total export being higher than total import” he stated.

He also highlighted Ghana’s overreliance on a few major commodities for exports in comparison to several product lines the country imports.

“From an import perspective as was indicated, we rely heavily on mineral fuels and oils. This reliance decreased over the last 5 quarters given that its shares decreased from 41.8% to 29.3% between the first quarters of 2023 and 2024. All the other classifications, we saw marginal increases over the last 5 quarters with the vehicles and automotive parts category seeing the highest change from 6.0% to 9.4% between the first quarters of 2023 and 2024” he added.

The government statistician also noted that this year’s data was obtained in collaboration with the Customs division of the Ghana Revenue Authority through digital means and thus digitalization will continue to take precedence in accessing administrative data moving forward.