Only 7.7% of Ghana’s 2.64 million businesses are formal – GSS report

Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), has revealed that about 92% of businesses in Ghana operate informally even though the number of business establishments has nearly tripled in the past decade.

Government Statistician Dr Alhassan Iddrisu gave the figures at the launch of the maiden edition of Ghana in Numbers 2025 in Accra.

The figures, according to him, are from the Service’s first Integrated Business Establishment Survey, which counted 2.64 million businesses in 2024. with 9 in 10 being micro businesses.

“Only 7.7% are formal. In other words, I’m talking about 92% of our businesses or enterprises being informal,” Dr Iddrisu said.

Between 2014 and 2024, the number of establishments nearly tripled while the number of people working in them doubled.

“Businesses are multiplying faster than the jobs inside them,” Dr Iddrisu said.

Unemployment fell from 14.6% in 2023 to 12.8% in 2025, but more than 7 in 10 jobs are still informal.

Ghana has about 12 million people aged 15 to 35, yet almost 1 in 3 jobseekers aged 15 to 24 cannot find work.

“Close to 2 million young people are neither working nor in education or training,” he said, adding that more than 6 in 10 of them are young women.

Dr Iddrisu warned that whether the growing youth population becomes a benefit or a burden will depend on decisions over the next 10 years on schooling, skills and jobs.

“Ghana’s youth window is open, but it is closing. Our choices on schooling, skills, jobs in the next 10 years will decide whether it becomes a dividend or a burden,” he said

The report shows uneven progress elsewhere. Inflation dropped from 54.1% in December 2022 to 5.4% in December 2025, but food insecurity rose from 37.7% in 2024 to 39.8% in 2025, affecting an estimated 13 million people.

GSS also carried out its first survey of informal cross-border trade. It recorded GH¢38.4 billion worth of goods traded informally with Togo, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, about 1.4 times the trade previously recorded with the three countries. Ghana recorded a goods trade surplus of GH¢148.3 billion in 2025.

Beyond business and trade, the publication covers population, social development, governance, the environment and the Sustainable Development Goals. An online portal offers district-level data, interactive maps and downloadable statistics.

Dr Iddrisu urged businesses and investors to use the findings, and called for support to help small firms grow and formalise.