Does Foreign Direct Investment Generate Long-Term Growth in Ghana?

Abstract

In pursuant to sustainable economic growth on the ticket of FDI-led growth hypothesis, the government of Ghana has instituted a myriad of thoughtful policy reforms to help boost the economy to realize a self-sustaining economic growth. To some extent, the policies might have paid off as the country was named the highest recipient of FDI in West Africa in 2018. However, the supposed upsurge in the inflow of foreign direct investment in the country and its expected long-run spillover benefits have not been tangibly felt in the region as the economy continues to oscillate. Therefore, this study utilized two methods; the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) and the variance decomposition method (VDM) to empirically examine economic growth of Ghana as a function of foreign direct investment (FDI) whiles controlling for exchange rate, financial development, trade oppeness and employment rate. The results of the study endorses the FDI-led growth for Ghana by indicating that a positive long run causal impact flows from FDI to economic growth. The findings from the VDM test affirm the results are robust and reliable. Therefore, the study suggests that government should amplify FDI inflow via policies like incentives to draw more foreign investors directly into other sectors other than the conventional sectors gratified by foreign investors.