Ghana’s trade surplus narrowed last year as revenue from cocoa and oil shipments declined.

The West African nation’s favorable trade balance shrank 10% to $2.6 billion in 2023, the Bank of Ghana said in a summary of economic and financial data. Total exports decreased 5% to $16.6 billion, driven by an 8.7% drop in cocoa income and 30% slide in revenue from oil shipments, the central bank said.

The world’s second-biggest cocoa producer harvested about 650,000 tons last year, the least in 13 years, amid bad weather and a scarcity of farm inputs. Crude production was down 9.5% at 35.4 million barrels in the first nine months of 2023, according to the finance ministry.

The developments weighed on Ghana’s foreign-exchange reserves, which decreased to $5.9 billion at the end of December from $6.3 billion a year earlier, the data show.

Below are other key economic and financial indicators in the Bank of Ghana report:

  • Total imports eased 4% to $14 billion in 2023.
  • Gold exports rose 15% to $7.6 billion.
  • Foreign-exchange reserves were enough to cover 2.7 months of imports, unchanged from December 2022.
  • The budget deficit narrowed to 2.5% of gross domestic product in the nine months through September, from 7.2% a year earlier.
  • Public debt, defined to exclude state-owned enterprise loans, rose to 567.3 billion cedis in the first nine months of last year, from 478.8 billion cedis a year earlier.
  • Banks’ total loans increased to 77 billion cedis in December from 67.7 billion cedis a year earlier.
    • Annual loans growth slowed to 13.8% from 25.5% a year earlier.
    • Capital adequacy ratio dropped to 13.9% from 16.2%.
    • Non-performing loans rose to 20.7% from 16%.
  • Monthly mobile-money transactions surged to 199.3 billion cedis in December from 122 billion cedis a year earlier.