Ghana’s trade with the world has expanded dramatically over the past two decades, but the composition of what leaves and enters the country points to a persistent industrial gap: the economy continues to export raw and lightly processed commodities while importing many of the refined, manufactured, and capital goods needed by businesses and households.
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), in its Ghana’s Merchandise Trade, 2004–2025: Two Decades in Review, captures the challenge bluntly: “Exporting crude oil while importing refined fuel, and shipping in machinery we could one day build, points to value we are leaving on the table.”
The report adds: “Growth in trade has not yet become a transformation of the economy behind it.”
Ghana has nevertheless made substantial progress in the scale of international trade. Total merchandise trade increased nearly ninefold from US$6 billion in 2004 to US$52.5 billion in 2025, while the country moved from persistent trade deficits to sustained surpluses from 2023. The trade surplus reached GH¢148.3 billion in 2025.
But the stronger trade balance has not fundamentally changed the structure of production.
Gold’s share of Ghana’s exports increased from 38.5% in 2004 to 63.1% in 2025, with gold exports reaching roughly US$20 billion. GSS notes that gold now earns more than cocoa and oil combined, warning that “when one product carries the economy, a swing in its global price is felt by everyone, from the treasury to the market trader.”
The issue is not gold production itself, but the value captured before the commodity reaches the export market. Ghana continues to export largely raw gold rather than refined products, leaving part of the processing and associated economic activity outside the country.
Cocoa demonstrates what greater processing can achieve. Cocoa beans accounted for 25.9% of exports in 2004 but 8.6% in 2025, as gold and oil became more dominant. Yet cocoa products increased their share of exports from 9.8% to 27% over the same period.
The shift suggests that processing can materially increase the value Ghana derives from an existing commodity base.
The import basket, meanwhile, reveals where the economy remains dependent on foreign production.
Ghana imported GH¢39.1 billion worth of vehicles in 2025, compared with vehicle exports of only about GH¢297 million. Machinery and mechanical appliances accounted for another GH¢26.7 billion, while electrical equipment added GH¢8.4 billion.
Machinery represents capital equipment that can support investment and production. The longer-term question is whether Ghana can use imported technology to build domestic capabilities in engineering, components, assembly, and manufacturing.
The same opportunity exists across industrial materials. Iron and steel imports reached GH¢10.1 billion in 2025, with another GH¢5.45 billion spent on iron and steel articles. Plastics accounted for GH¢10.4 billion, while base minerals and miscellaneous chemical products added GH¢6.6 billion and GH¢5.5 billion, respectively.
These are inputs into construction, manufacturing, packaging, and infrastructure, suggesting that industrialisation will require more than producing finished consumer goods. Ghana also needs intermediate industries capable of supplying manufacturers with metals, plastics, chemicals, electrical components, and other materials.
Food imports reveal another part of the gap. Ghana imported GH¢4.8 billion of cereals, GH¢3.4 billion of meat, GH¢2.6 billion of fish, and GH¢2.8 billion of fertilisers in 2025. Pharmaceutical imports stood at about GH¢3.7 billion.
The figures underline that domestic production alone will not be enough. Storage, processing, logistics, technology, and industrial-scale production are also necessary to reduce dependence on imported food and manufactured products.
Fuel presents perhaps the clearest contradiction in Ghana’s trade structure.
Mineral fuels and oils accounted for 25.7% of imports in both 2024 and 2025, after rising from 5.7% in 2010 to a peak of 32.1% in 2023. At the same time, crude petroleum became a major export following the start of production in 2011, with its share of exports reaching 31.8% in 2019 before falling to 8.3% in 2025.
Ghana therefore produces and exports crude petroleum while continuing to rely heavily on imported refined petroleum products.
The GSS identifies stronger domestic refining capacity, where commercially viable, as one of the clearest opportunities to reduce refined-fuel imports. Such investment could also create demand for storage, transportation, engineering, and maintenance services while reducing foreign-exchange requirements for refined products.
The broader opportunity is to move gradually from importing finished products towards producing more intermediate and finished goods domestically.
That does not mean simply restricting imports. Factories need machinery, manufacturers need raw materials, and businesses need specialised equipment. Import restrictions that raise production costs could undermine the very industrial investment Ghana seeks to attract.
Instead, the GSS argues that the country should “add value before we export, widen the range of what we sell, help small and medium businesses reach foreign markets, and produce more of what we now buy from abroad.”
The need for diversification is reinforced by Ghana’s export concentration. Gold, crude petroleum, and cocoa together accounted for about 75% of exports on average since 2011, leaving export earnings and public finances exposed to commodity-price swings.
Trade geography is also changing. Asia’s share of Ghana’s exports rose from 7.9% in 2004 to 50.1% in 2025, making it the country’s largest export market. Asia also supplied 48.4% of Ghana’s imports in 2025, up from 26.9% in 2004.
The shift creates both an opportunity and a competitive test for Ghanaian manufacturers and exporters. Businesses must meet international standards, achieve scale, and control costs if they are to compete in integrated markets.
Small and medium-sized enterprises will be particularly important. The GSS says SMEs “remain underrepresented” in export flows and points to better access to trade finance, market information, and export-readiness support as necessary to help smaller firms reach foreign markets.
The African Continental Free Trade Area could provide an important stepping stone by giving Ghanaian businesses access to a larger regional market, while improved customs procedures, transport infrastructure, and trade facilitation can lower the cost of moving locally produced goods.
Ghana’s trade figures show that the country has succeeded in expanding its international economic footprint. Exports accounted for 61.3% of total merchandise trade in 2025, compared with 32.1% in 2004.
The harder task is turning that trade strength into domestic productive capacity.
The opportunities are visible in the import data: refining, agro-processing, vehicle assembly, engineering, metal fabrication, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastics, and other manufacturing activities where domestic demand is already substantial.
As the GSS puts it, “The task ahead is to turn a larger trade footprint into deeper, more resilient, more broadly shared prosperity.”
