Burkina Faso tops African countries importing NTEs from Ghana – GEPA
The Ghana Export Promotion Center, has indicated that Burkina Faso came up top in ECOWAS and Africa as the lead importing country of Non-Traditional Exports (NTES) from Ghana in 2020.
According to GEPA, it maintained its position as the top importer in 2020 from 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Burkina Faso in 2020, imported NTEs worth $242.7m from Ghana, representing 31.68% of total top 10 ECOWAS markets, showing a growth of 11.57% over its previous year’s contribution.
Togo ($149.8m) and Senegal ($100m) were the second and third lead importing countries of NTEs from Ghana in ECOWAS, respectively.
Ivory Coast ($67.8m), Niger ($66.7m), Mali ($50.9m), Benin ($36.5m), Nigeria ($31.2m), Guinea Bissau ($14.3m) and Guinea ($9.1m) placed 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th respectively.
However, average export value for the 10 top ECOWAS States in 2020 stood at $76.62 million relative to the $82.86 million in 2019, showing a fall of 5.70% in average exports value.
The NTEs performance along a major trading route in the ECOWAS market, Abidjan-Lagos corridor, showed a growth into Cote D’lvoire, but a combined fall of $85.29 million to Togo, Benin and Nigeria.
According to GEPA, this enormous drop in performance, was due to closure of the Nigeria-Seme border and trade related challenges experienced by exporters and economic operators in Benin.
Additionally, Ghana bagged a little over $2.84 billion in Non-Traditional Exports (NTEs) in 2020, despite the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on global trade.
According to the Ghana Exports Promotions Authority, this is a decline of 1.84% over that of 2019.
Coming at a time COVID-19 had hit the global economy, this could be described as relatively good for the country
The NTEs constituted 19.67% of total exports in 2020.
The fall was due to a downward trend in the performance of the processed and semi-processed products sector, particularly, cocoa butter and canned tuna.
Total exports also fell steeply, relatively to a gentle fall in NTEs during the period under review.
Top 10 leading products show increases in performance
Meanwhile, the top 10 leading products of the entire Non-Traditional sector as well as top 10 leading products of the Processed, Agricultural and Arts & Craft Subsectors showed increases in performance with average growths of 24.11%, 21.28%, 13.49% and 472.81% respectively.
According to GEPA, these positive growth figures associated with the sector relative to traditional sector exhibits buoyancy of the NTEs sector.
The highest contributing subsector, Processed/Semi Processed products, accounted for about 83.71% to total NTEs.
The performance of this subsector experienced a fall of 2.94% in 2020 over 2019 earnings.
The Agricultural subsector recorded a 0.65% rise in its performance from 2019, with a 15.21% contribution to total NTE’s in 2020.
Industrial Art & Craft accounted for 1.08% of total NTEs, depicting an overwhelming increase of 110.88% over the 2019 years earnings.
Cocoa paste also overtook Cocoa butter as the highest earner with natural rubber sheets as the lowest earner of the top 10 leading products.
The first and 10th earned $463.41 million and $73.60 million, respectively.
Average earning of the top 10 earners was $170.37 million.
