Ghana’s GDP to Grow 9.5%-10.5% on Oil Revenue, Databank Says

By Emily Bowers

(Bloomberg) — Ghana’s economic growth will average between 9.5 percent and 10.5 percent over the next five years as revenue from oil production starts to flow to the government, Databank Financial Services said.

Growth will accelerate to about 6.3 percent this year from 4.9 percent in 2009 as the government of the West African nation, the world’s second-biggest cocoa producer, invests more in agriculture, said the Accra-based brokerage in an e-mailed note late yesterday.

“Ghana’s relatively small but efficient private sector could expand significantly on the back of the oil and gas industry,” analyst Sampson Akligoh wrote in the note.

The country is set to begin producing its first crude oil for export in the fourth quarter of this year at the offshore Jubilee oil field, with initial production estimated at 120,000 barrels a day, Databank said. Government oil revenue, pegged at about $1 billion for 2011 and 2012, won’t be enough to produce a fiscal surplus, Databank said.

“Unless further discoveries are made leading to the realization of a fiscal surplus, we think that there is no likelihood for any significant oil savings for Ghana,” Akligoh wrote.

Oil earnings will account for about 15 percent of total revenue by 2015, he said.

–Editors: Philip Sanders