A firm-level assessment of the effect of macroeconomic uncertainty on Ghana’s non-traditional export performance

The presence of macroeconomic uncertainty poses potential and veritable risk to real sector activity. Thus, this study set out to examine how Non-traditional Export (NTE) firms in Ghana respond to macroeconomic uncertainty. The study conducts a survey on NTE firms in Ghana to elicit responses, which are used to construct subjective measures for export performance and the key predictors including macroeconomic uncertainty. Eighty-seven (87) firms respond to the survey, representing a response rate of 45.8 percent. The study also employs both descriptive and econometric analyses (ordered logistic regression) for the investigation. The study finds that moderate to average and high levels of macroeconomic uncertainty are more likely to predict low export performance, and less likely to predict average to high levels of export performance. In addition, firms demonstrating moderate to average levels of export commitment and at the same time displaying moderate to average levels of product development capabilities are less likely to report low export performance. Furthermore, average to high levels of export performance are more likely to be predicted by firms that demonstrate a high adoption rate of export promotion programmes. The policy implication for this study is that any coordinated set of policies aimed at boosting NTE performance in Ghana must include specific policies measure aimed at addressinig conditions that evoke macroeconomic uncertainty.