Ghanaian Firms and the Evolution of the Manufacturing Sector in Ghana

Authors
Andrew Kerr

The Ghanaian Statistical Service conducted a firm census in 2014 covering all sectors and all but the very smallest establishments. Around 650 000 firms were surveyed in phase 1. In the subsequent 2 years a phase 2 survey was undertaken to collect detailed accounting data on a stratified sample of these firms.

This data is extremely valuable to policy makers and researchers. The aim of the project is to put a sample of the data from phase 1 and phase 2 into the public domain, as well as to understand how comparable the manufacturing firm data from 2014 are to the 2003 and 1987 industrial censuses, which covered only the manufacturing and mining sectors (2003 also covered construction and utilities). These data have been put into the public domain through a previous project undertaken by Francis Teal (CSAE, Oxford), which was also funded by PEDL.

As part of the current project a panel of manufacturing firms from 2003 that were still alive in 2014 will be created. The PI will also conduct a series of 8 lectures for GSS staff working with the data, with a focus on understanding how to undertake research on such data in Stata, which is the software used by GSS staff in the industrial statistics division.

Authors

Andrew Kerr

University of Cape Town