The trend of growth in Ghana’s industrial sector is becoming a major cause of concern, demanding immediate and urgent actions to rejuvenate the sector with such a huge potential for transformation.
New provisional data for the third quarter of 2025 (Q3 2025) reveals a catastrophic slowdown in the nation’s vital Industry sector, raising serious concerns about the country’s economic stability.
Over just one year, the Ghana Statistical Service’s (GSS) data reveals that the sector’s growth rate has virtually collapsed, acting as a massive anchor dragging down overall national economic momentum.
The Slowest Growth on Record
The Industry sector, which covers crucial areas like Manufacturing, Construction, and Mining, recorded a meager 0.8 percent year-on-year (YoY) growth in Q3 2025. This nearly flat growth represents a monumental drop from the 11.4 percent growth rate recorded just four quarters prior in Q3 2024, thus, the same period last year.
The short-term momentum data confirms this alarming trend, with the quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted growth rate slowing down to a nominal 0.2 percent in Q3 2025.
Why the Industrial Collapse is a Major Cause for Concern
The shrinking growth of the Industry sector is bad news because this sector represents a huge part of the nation’s productive capacity and its ability to generate crucial foreign exchange.
Oil & Gas is Pulling the Economy Backward
The primary reason the entire industrial engine has stalled is the devastating performance of the Mining and Quarrying sub-sector. This critical area saw a contraction of -2.8 percent (YoY).
The biggest shock comes from the Oil and Gas component, which shrank by an alarming -18.2 percent year-on-year in Q3 2025. This means that the core resource extraction industry, which often drives national revenue, is failing to produce and is actively subtracting value from the economy.
Weakness Neutralizes Progress Elsewhere
Despite the overall stagnation, certain parts of the industrial sector are still trying to push forward.
For instance, the Construction sector expanded by 3.3 percent (YoY), and Manufacturing grew by 3.9 percent (YoY). However, the severe contraction in resource extraction is neutralizing the positive gains made by construction crews and factory workers, leaving the sector with virtually no net growth.
Industry is Too Big to Fail Quietly
The Industry sector holds a significant 32.1 percent share of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). When a sector this large expands at only 0.8 percent, it severely limits the country’s overall performance.
Practically, this collapse means the industrial sector contributed only 0.3 percentage points to the country’s overall GDP growth rate of 5.5 percent in Q3 2025. In comparison, the Services sector contributed 3.25 percentage points, and Agriculture contributed 1.65 percentage points, showing that the industrial slump is directly preventing the national economy from accelerating.
The Bottomline
To put it simply, it is clear that the attention needed in the Industry sector to drive growth is lacking. That notwithstanding, it is a significant sector that holds great potential to create sustainable jobs, earn foreign exchange, and move the economy from raw material-based to an industrialized society.
Until the fundamental problems are fixed, the industrial segment will continue to act as an anchor, limiting prosperity for the entire country.
