The Sectoral Structure of the Economy, 1960

In order to explore in a more exhaustive way the pattern of production of the economy of Ghana, the sectoral structure and the system of flows of goods and services, we have constructed a set of inter-sectoral accounts of the economy for the year 1960, a device known technically as an input-output table. The input-output table presents the economic activity by sectors, as does the ‘production’ method of conventional national accounts; but whereas the latter informs us only about the contribution of the various sectors to the aggregate of domestic (or national) product, the input-output technique traces all the sectoral flows of output originating in the economy, including output absorbed by other sectors for use in the process of production. The sectors of the economy produce goods and services which are either final products which take up the expenditure on the Gross Domestic Product classified into private consumption, public consumption, capital formation and exports, or they are inputs used by other sectors for production purposes. The sales of every sector are allocated in the table either to the various sectors purchasing them or to the final uses to which they are put. We obtain, therefore, both the composition of the final uses by contributing sectors and the flows between the sectors themselves—the so-called ‘production matrix’.