By Elorm Desewu
The Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) business and consumer confidence surveys, conducted in February 2022, revealed a softening of sentiments with business confidence declining by a greater extent.
While consumer confidence dipped by 0.7 percentage points, business confidence declined by 9.6 percentage points. Consumers were mainly concerned about the persistent increases in fuel prices, increases in transportation fares and rising inflation. Businesses, in addition to these factors, were also concerned about the impact of these on macroeconomic conditions and on their short-term targets and profitability for 2022.
These survey findings were broadly in line with observed trends in the February 2022 Ghana Purchasing Managers Index (PMI). The Ghana PMI, which is a measure of the rate of inventory accumulation by managers of private sector companies, declined below the 50.0 benchmark on the back of weak output and purchasing activity amidst rising inflation.
The rebound in economic activity continued, as reflected in some improvements in the Bank’s updated Composite Index of Economic Activity (CIEA), although at a slower pace than in 2021.
The index recorded an annual growth of 4.2 percent in January 2022 compared to 13.9 and 3.4 percent in the corresponding periods of 2021 and 2020. The key drivers of the index during the period were industrial production, exports, credit to the private sector and airpassenger arrivals.
Consumption of goods and services, and construction activity, however, slowed down, acting as a drag on the index.
