China is largest supplier of imports to Ghana

China has become the largest supplier of imports to Ghana.

According to a GNA report citing statistics from the Ministry of Trade, China has supplied 18.3 per cent of Ghana’s imports worth over $2 billion in 2013.

Ghana imports food, live animals, beverages and tobacco; Crude materials except food/fuel, minerals, vegetable oil, fat, wax, chemical products, manufactured goods, machinery, transport and other equipment. Ghana also imports textiles from China.

China, however, is Ghana’s ninth largest export destination, accounting for 2.2 per cent of exports worth $420 million in 2013, the statistics show.

According to the data, China is Ghana’s second largest trading partner after Europe and the seventh largest African trading partner.

Ghana’s exports to China are dominated by traditional or primary exports, such as unprocessed cocoa, raw metals, wood products, and petroleum oils, which account for 96 per cent of exports to the Asian nation, the report says.

In 2011 the bilateral trade volume between Ghana and China reached $3.47 billion with a growth of 69.04% in 2011 according to information gathered by ghanabusinessnews.com.

And even though, Ghanaian exports to China grew by 150%, the total value was only $400 million.

Aggregate trade value between Ghana and China rose from $170 million in 2006 to more than $1.3 billion by the end of 2010.

At the end of 2014, however, the value of trade between Ghana and China reached $ 5.6 billion, making Ghana the Asian country’s single biggest trading partner.

Meanwhile, bilateral trade between Ghana and China hit $5.43 billion in 2012, Chinese officials said.

The then Chinese ambassador to Ghana, Gong Jianzhong was cited elsewhere to have said that bilateral trade between the two countries went up 56.5 percent from the 2011 figures of $3.47 billion.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi