Stakeholders at the Africa Business Conversation programme have urged the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to produce sector specific data to aid the development of businesses.

The call was made during the Africa Business Conversation, a Thought Leadership series organized by indigenous law firm AB and David.

Held on the theme “Business in Ghana, is it a Game of Numbers”, the programme, which gathered policy analysts, captains of industry, policy makers, the academia as well as other stakeholders, aimed to bridge the gap between data churned out by the country’s GSS and businesses.

The Greater Accra President of the Association of Ghana Industries Tsonam Apkeloo, charged the GSS to broaden its database by focusing on sector specific. This, he said will enable diverse businesses to make good use of data.

“We need to see more of sector-specific data. We have been collaborating with the GSS on this but we need to see more. This will help the many and diverse businesses we have.”

A Professor of Finance at the University of Ghana Business School, Godfred Bokpin highlighted the gap between academia and industry. He urged university lecturers to abreast themselves with current industry trends as well as current data to keep students informed.

Moderator for the programme and Senior Partner at AB and David, David Ofosu-Dorte admonished businesses to make use of the data provided by the Ghana Statistical Service.

Mr. Ofosu-Dorte advised businesses to make use of the numerous data published by the GSS.

“We must give credit to the GSS, there are a lot of what they publish which businesses ought to pay attention to,” he said.

The Ghana Statistical Service has revealed that it will begin the production of regional and district economic growth figures in 2026.

This is expected to commence after the completion of the rebasing, which typically recalibrates and incorporates new economic structures and data for efficient modeling.

Addressing concerns of the unavailability of sector specific data sets, Government Statistician, Dr. Alhassan Iddrisu said the service is working on reforms which will improve Ghana's data sets.

“We are very mindful of regional and district data. We are currently embarking on a GDP rebasing exercise. We believe that when we complete that exercise it will provide the opportunity to possibly report GDP at the regional level.”