AGI releases report on economy
The fourth quarter business barometer report of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) indicates that the confidence level of businesses in the country’s economy has reduced.
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The business confidence index dropped from 97.3 in the 2015 third quarter to 93.1 for the 2015 fourth quarter.
Challenges
Presenting the findings of the report at a press conference in Accra yesterday, the Chief Executive Officer of the AGI, Mr Seth Twum-Akwaboah, said the drop in confidence in business had been attributed to the major challenges facing industries.
He said the major challenges that industries faced during the quarter included high cost of electricity, inadequate power supply and currency instability.
The survey focused on the current performance of businesses and their expectations for the next quarter.
To give regional analysis and enhance the value of the AGI Business Barometer survey, the fourth quarter report included regional analysis to give details on how the various regions performed.
A total of 507 businesses from the manufacturing, services and construction sectors across the country were interviewed for the survey.
Outcome and expectations
The report indicated that 24 per cent of the business executives said their current performance was better than that of the third quarter, 45 per cent said their performance was the same while 31 per cent said their performance was worse.
On their expectations, 58 per cent said they expected improvement in the first quarter of 2016, 35 per cent said they expected the business situation to remain the same while seven per cent expected that the business condition would worsen.
“Employment levels within the quarter increased marginally with 34 per cent increase in employment”, the report said.
The report further mentioned high cost of electricity, inadequate power supply, unstable currency, multiplicity of taxes, access to credit and high inflation as some of the challenges industries were facing.