Ghana’s economy grew by 6% in real terms in the second quarter of 2026, with the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector emerging as the single largest driver of economic expansion, according to the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS).
Government Statistician Dr Alhassan Iddrisu, presenting the 2026 second-quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates on Wednesday, September 9, said the economy expanded from GH¢48.4 billion in real terms in the second quarter of 2025 to GH¢51.3 billion in the corresponding period of 2026.
The 6% growth, however, represented a moderation from the 6.6% recorded in the second quarter of 2025.
Dr Iddrisu said the performance was supported largely by the services sector, particularly ICT, which recorded a 30.9% year-on-year expansion.
“Information and communication technology grew by 30.9%, up from 21.3%, and that subsector alone contributed 41.5% of all GDP growth in this quarter,” he said.
He described ICT as “the single largest driver in the entire economy”, noting that the sector had maintained double-digit growth in every quarter over the past three years.
“At 30.9% year-on-year growth, this is one of ICT’s strongest quarters since 2021,” Dr Iddrisu said. “Ghana’s growth story today is in real time substantially a digital story. That’s what the data is telling us.”
The services sector, which accounted for 45.9% of GDP, grew by 8% during the quarter and contributed 57.6% of overall economic growth.
Transport and storage was another major contributor, expanding by 14.9% and accounting for 13.5% of total GDP growth.
Manufacturing also recorded stronger growth, rising by 6.6% from 5.4% a year earlier, while forestry and logging grew by 10.7%.
Industry as a whole expanded by 4.3%, an improvement from 2.4% in the second quarter of 2025. The improvement was largely driven by oil and gas, which rebounded from a 29% contraction a year earlier to 22.4% growth.
Dr Iddrisu said oil and gas alone contributed 12.8% of total GDP growth.
Agriculture, meanwhile, grew by 3.9%, although this was lower than the 7.1% recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2025.
The sector was affected by a sharp contraction in fishing, which declined by 24.7%. The Government Statistician said fishing was the only agricultural subsector to contract and reduced overall economic growth by 4.6 percentage points.
“While we are looking at broad-based growth, [it is] undermined by one significant contraction that our coastal and fishing communities will feel directly,” he said.
Other sectors that contracted included accommodation and food services, which fell by 7.8%; public administration and defence, down 4.7%; education, down 4.7%; and real estate, which declined by 2.6%.
Despite the moderation in annual growth, Dr Iddrisu said most components of the economy were performing above their long-term averages.
Services was 2.7 percentage points above its long-run average, while overall GDP, industry and non-oil GDP were also above their historical norms.
Non-oil GDP grew by 5.4%, down from 8.5% in the second quarter of 2025.
Dr Iddrisu also highlighted a significant easing in economy-wide price pressures. The GDP deflator declined from 18.6% a year earlier to 5.5% in the second quarter of 2026.
“That is huge in terms of easing,” he said, describing the 13.1-percentage-point decline as a notable development occurring alongside continued economic expansion.
For the first half of 2026, real GDP growth stood at 6.2%, compared with 6.4% during the first half of 2025.
Services grew by 7.5% over the first six months and accounted for 52.6% of total first-half growth, while industry expanded by 5.6%.
Dr Iddrisu said the GDP estimates were provisional and would be revised as additional source data became available.
