The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has observed, Ghana's market is too sensitive to global shocks and would need to diversify exports to to minimize effects of declining commodity prices on economy.

Division Chief  of research at the IMF  Thomas Helbling notes  "the more diversified an economy is the more resilient it is. the more specialized the more sensitive to the market it is".

The country is  said to have lost about 1.5 billion dollars over the last few years because of  declining prices of gold and cocoa.

Unexpected falls in export revenues has affected government's efforts in getting  get the required revenue to  support its operations.

Speaking to JOYBUSINESS on the side lines of the  IMF spring meeting in Washington D.C  ,  Mr.  Helbling says, focusing more other exports commodities would  ensure that Ghana benefits  from the expect commodity boom in the coming months.

"The problem for Ghana is that it's not very diversified so its specialized in very few commodities, so you can have idiosyncratic market conditions play a role", Helbling said.

He adds that despite the effect of  the US tapering on most emerging markets, Ghana can  put in place measures to  internally to minimize the blow.

According to the Bank of Ghana, earnings from gold exports dropped to 5 billion from 5.6  billion dollars for last year , while cocoa also declined  billion dollars to 1.6 billion dollars from 2.2  billion dollars in 2012 

However earnings  from non- traditional exports went  up by almost  600  million to reach 3.3  billion dollars. The exports include banana, mango, pineapple and vegetables.

The European Union (EU) remains the largest export market for the country’s Non-Traditional Exports(NTE).

About 34% of the country’s NTEs end up in the EU market, 10% in other developed countries, and about 32% for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) market.

Ghana made $2.2 billion from non-traditional exports for the first eight months of last year to overtake cocoa as Ghana’s third highest export earner.