China has overtaken the United Kingdom (UK) as the largest contributor of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows to Ghana.
FDI inflows from China for last year notwithstanding the Covid-19 pandemic shot up by 53 times in second half of 2020 when compared to inflows recorded from the Asian country in the first half of 2020.
Data made available to norvanreports by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) indicate that foreign inflows from China for the first half of 2020 stood at some $14.16 million with inflows from the UK being $238.9 million.
However, by the end of December 2020, China had move from being the 6th largest FDI contributor to Ghana to being the biggest contributor of foreign inflows to Ghana, overtaking the UK with some $751 million FDI inflows.
UK’s contribution to FDI inflows to Ghana increased marginally from $238.9 million end-June 2020 to $243.17 million end-December 2020.
Closely behind the UK, is South Africa with foreign inflows of $242 million, Australia and Netherlands followed with $239.17 million and $238.02 million respectively.
Meanwhile, total FDI inflows for 2020 according to Ghana’s foremost investment agency, the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), was $2.65 billion.
The inflows recorded for 2020 represents a 139 percentage points increment in FDI when compared to the $1.1 billion foreign inflows recorded for 2019.
In total, investment inflows – both from local and foreign investors – for the period under review was $2.79 billion.
A total of 279 projects were registered with the GIPC in 2020 comprising of 129 new projects, 131 upstream developments and 19 Free Zones activities dispersed across 8 regions.
Cumulatively, some 27,110 jobs are expected to be generated from the 279 projects.