Overview of Ghana’s Export and Import, FDI inflow and outflow: Is there any connection between its trading partners and the source of its foreign investing countries?

Evans Yeboah,Yu Jing,Anning Lucy

doi:10.34256/ajir20236

Abstract

Foreign direct investment inflows and outflows, export and import are seen as some of the major factors for transforming a country’s economic growth and development. This paper provides and evaluate literature review on importation and exportation alongside inward and outward FDI in Ghana. By considering some selected countries such China, India, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom in determining whether there is some sort of connection between Ghana’s trading partners and investing countries in its economy by the use of quantitative method. The results show that Ghana’s export values have improved rapidly over the past years with a continuous decrease in its imports. The outcome further proves that, at the initial level, export from Ghana to China, India, US and UK were of lower values and with much effort by the Ghana government to control the balance of trade deficit from these major trading partners is in the process of achieving the goal, as the country has been experiencing balance of trade surplus from China and India except in the situation US and UK. It was also revealed that China, India, US and UK are not only major trading partners, but also top investing nations in Ghana. It is suggested Ghana should increase its outward FDI and also encourages its multinational companies to embark on cross-boarder investment.

Highlights

The flow of foreign direct investment, export and import of goods and services provide both positive and negative influences on a country’s economic growth and development
(Nomfundo & Nicholas, 2017), to provide an overview of the structure and performance of Ghana’s imports, consider the effect of the country’s historical trade policy reform and other determinants during the period of 1995 to 2014 of which the results proved that, over this period, the country successfully established a few bilateral trade agreements with African and nonAfrican countries
As the trend of export and import destinations, foreign direct investment becomes very difficult to observe as a result of changes in data on the various nations on a yearly basis

Summary

Introduction

The flow of foreign direct investment, export and import of goods and services provide both positive and negative influences on a country’s economic growth and development. After 62years of independence and a fall into economic crisis in 1998 as a result of a fall in global price of raw materials made a Ghana comeback in terms of reforming and restructuring its economy. Ghana’s major export trading commodities are minerals and raw material (gold, cocoa, bauxite, timber etc.) and imports manufactured products. The majority of Ghana’s consumption of manufactured products come from imports from other foreign nations. Ghana has a long standing modest history of foreign direct investment attraction (FDI). The come to trust in foreign direct investment by most African countries led to several changes in their investment policies and structural reforms. Economic and political restructuring in many countries and eventually entered into the Word Trade Organization (WTO) brought about signing numerous trade agreements among developed, developing and least developed nations to foster and promote developmental and investment goals

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion