Chief Executive Officer of GEPA, Dr. Afua Asabea Asare
Ghana’s non-traditional export (NTE) trade earned US$2.8bn in 2020, a marginal 1.8 percent decline from the previous year’s figure of US$2.9bn, according to the latest NTE figures from the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA).
The dip in 2020 was largely due to the harsh impact of the coronavirus pandemic on trade and a reflection of the downward trend in the performance of processed and semi-processed products, particularly cocoa butter and canned tuna.
The top 10 leading products of the entire NTE sector and products in the processed, agricultural and arts, and craft subsectors showed increases in performance, with average growths of 24.11 percent, 21.28 percent, 13.49 percent and 472.81 percent respectively, signaling the buoyancy of the exports.
The highest contributing subsector, which is the processed/ semi-processed products, accounted for about 83.71 percent of total exports, even though it witnessed a 2.94 percent fall in earnings over that for the previous year NTE earnings from the processed/ semi-processed sub-sector amounted to US$2.3bn in the year under review, down from US$2.45bn in 2019.
The industrial art and craft sub-sector showed up strongly, recording an increase of 110.88 percent over 2019 earnings.
The 2020 performance and the resurgence of the virus pandemic this year put the nation’s ambitious non-traditional exports target in jeopardy.
Ghana’s National Exports Development Strategy (NEDS) seeks to raise up to US$25bn from non-traditional exports by 2029, to be accompanied by deep structural transformation that positions Ghana as a competitive export-led industrialised economy.
Chief Executive Officer of GEPA, Dr. Afua Asabea Asare, believes the target is still realistic, stating that there would be neither an upward or downward review.
“Our estimates for the NEDS are quite ambitious, but it was borne out of research. We are not going to review it either up or downwards, but we will rather work hard and continue with our interventions in the exports space,” she emphasised.
According to her, the prudent interventions being deployed towards exports promotion will facilitate the sector’s recovery.
“Everybody is digitising now, so we are looking at different ways of doing things. We will not stick to the traditional ways of doing things and miss out. We need to diversify and explore new opportunities in products such as cannabis and cassava powder and use technology to achieve what we’ve set out to achieve,” she added.