Data from the Ghana Investment Promotion Center has revealed that over 70 percent of the locally generated funds invested in the economy went into the construction, building or real estate sector last year.
According to the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) data recorded from January to December 2020, out of GH¢1.43 billion realized as local liquidity investment, GH¢1.30 billion was channeled into construction, building or real estate.
Manufacturing came second with some GH¢83 million followed by services with GH¢33 million, agriculture, GH¢15 million and general trading recording GH¢4 million. All these amounted to a total of 52 wholly Ghanaian owned projects registered for the year 2020.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of the GIPC, Yoofi Grant, the level of local investment was exciting despite the impact of COVID-19 and what makes it more exciting is the sector that received the chunk of investment.
“The data for locals is exciting but could have even been more exciting; you see that a lot more people like to go into the construction sector but the manufacturing sector also recorded a good number due to the One District, One Factory policy. Manufacturing recorded 21 projects, services 18, general trading 8, agriculture 2, building and construction which had the lion share of the investment had 2 projects under it.”
For the year under review, some countries that stood out as the nation’s leading sources of investment included China, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and the Netherlands.
In terms of sector allocation for the investments, the manufacturing sector with 57 projects recorded the largest FDI value of US$1.27billion. This was followed by the services and mining sectors with FDI values of US$656.19million and US$424.32million respectively.
Some leading sources of Investments recorded from January to December 2020 were; China brought in FDI of US$751.01 million, United Kingdom brought in FDI of US$243.17 million, South Africa brought in FDI of US$242 million, Australia brought in FDI of US$239.17 million, Netherlands brought in FDI of US$238.02 million.
In total, the foreign direct investment (FDI) component amounted to US$2.65 billion, a 139.06 percent increase over that of 2019 when US$1.1 billion came in through FDIs, with US$145 million local matching funds.
While this trend of strong performance in Ghana’s inbound FDI amid the global health pandemic can be attributed to a combination of factors including effective government policy responses, an easing of travel restrictions and, more importantly, the delivery and expected future development of vaccines in-country – the GIPC’s notable efforts as the leading investment promotion agency also played a pivotal role in attracting investors.
