In 2011, Ghana had a population estimated at around 24 million people. Its economy was largely reliant on services, agriculture and exports, with some of its main exports including gold, cocoa beans and timber. Foreign relations in 2011 were marked by strong ties to other African countries as well as to European and North American nations. Politically, the country was a unitary presidential republic ruled by President John Atta Mills since 2009. The president was assisted by his cabinet and the Parliament which is composed of two chambers; the Legislative Assembly and the Council of State. In 2011, Ghana held its general election in December that year and re-elected President John Atta Mills with 50.8% of the vote. See mathgeneral for Ghana in the year of 2017.
Yearbook 2011
Ghana. According to Countryaah official site, the news from Ghana during the year was very much about the new oil nation’s hopes for economic progress. Shortly after the country began commercial oil extraction in late 2010, it was reported in February that a new oil field was discovered in the sea. Visit ABBREVIATIONFINDER for the acronym of GHA that stands for the country of Ghana.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated that Ghana’s economy would grow by about 13% during the year, against 6% in 2010.
In March, Parliament passed a long-debated law on how oil revenues should be used. It was stipulated that the money should be collected in a government fund and that the government may use 70% of the assets for development projects. The law also aims to give the public insight into how oil revenues are managed.
Ghana is the world’s second largest producer of cocoa and Africa’s second largest gold producer. However, the oil is expected to soon pass both of these goods as the country’s largest source of income.
Oil recovery also leads to gas production. In order to take care of the gas, the government signed an agreement with the Chinese state on a loan worth USD 800 million for, among other things. pipelines.
Economy
Despite some progress, the country remains deeply backward and maintains an essentially rural profile, also because the substantial mineral resources are exported without any industrial manipulation. As in past decades, the wealth of Ghana derives mainly from the cultivation and sale of cocoa, of which the country is the second largest producer in the world: about half of the cultivated areas are destined for this crop. The industrial apparatus is weak and, since independence, has gradually lost its importance. In 1957 Ghana possessed one of the strongest productive structures in the entire continent, but starting with the presidency of K. Nkrumah, characterized by ambitious programs and very significant expenses, the economy has undergone an involutionary process; However, the repeated moments of political instability, which persisted until the end of the 1980s, were not extraneous to this regression. On several occasions (1983 – 86 and 1987 – 90), and with the collaboration of the World Bank, restructuring and economic recovery programs have been launched; in 1992 Democratic government was re-established and measures were taken both to foster recovery and to encourage training in the private sector: the results, however, were modest, for reasons partly attributable to excessive demographic pressure.
As regards the individual production sectors, it should be noted that over the last fifteen years the most dynamic sector has been that of services (in particular, commercial activities have strengthened), while industry and mining activities have made rather modest progress. Agriculture, on the other hand, has suffered for many reasons: the excessive demographic load, the fluctuating trend in international cocoa prices, the meteorological trend that is not always favorable. In an attempt to restore a certain dynamism to cocoa production (in the 1960s production was close to 4 million q and exports represented about half of the commercial surplus, while in 1997 production was 3.7 million q and its weight on exports was around 40 %), since 1993 the government body in charge of organizing the sector has been deprived of the monopoly and some companies have been authorized to buy the product directly from farmers.
Crops destined for local consumption are decidedly insufficient and domestic demand can only be satisfied by resorting to imports; the country is therefore mainly engaged in the attempt to achieve food self-sufficiency. Forest resources are also important; in order to avert the danger of deforestation, programs (financed both by international organizations and by individual countries) have been in place since 1989 for the reconstitution of the forest heritage. The Ghana also needs to import large quantities of meat (breeding is practiced only in the northern regions) and fish (compared to a demand for 600,000 ÷ 700. 000 t per year fished quantities vary between 350,000 as 430. 000 t).