The 28th Annual CEO Survey published by auditing and accounting firm PwC has revealed that 70 percent of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in Ghana are confident about economic growth in 2025.
The survey further showed that 48 percent of CEOs are optimistic about their respective companies’ revenue growth in the same year.
According to the report, while 70 percent of Ghanaian CEOs believe the national economy will expand in 2025, a significantly smaller proportion—48 percent—are equally confident in their own companies’ revenue prospects.
“More instructive is the finding that Ghana’s CEOs are less pessimistic about their businesses’ short-term prospects than when we posed that question to them just 12 months earlier—65% of Ghana’s CEOs at that time were very confident or extremely confident about their company’s 2024 revenue prospects,” the report noted.
The report surveyed 4,701 CEOs across 109 countries and territories, including Ghana, between October 1 and November 8, 2024.
While the global and regional figures were weighted in proportion to each country’s nominal GDP for representativeness, PwC indicated that “Ghana’s data is based on unweighted data from the sample.”
In his foreword, Country Senior Partner at PwC Ghana, Vish Ashiagbor, explained that the survey offers a window into the minds of CEOs, revealing what keeps them awake at night as well as what fuels their hope.
“With more CEOs in Ghana participating in the survey compared to last year, we trust that the sentiments expressed in the results are representative of the points of view of the CEO community in general,” he stated.
He highlighted that the key concerns among Ghanaian CEOs include economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, artificial intelligence (AI)/Generative AI, and climate change.
Ashiagbor further explained that CEOs are facing a mix of short-term shocks and long-term disruptions whose effects, though gradual, could have significant implications for businesses and their customers.
“What the findings from the survey confirm is that shocks do not only throw up challenges—they produce opportunities too. And CEOs see these opportunities. However, not all businesses are agile enough to pivot and take advantage of the opportunities that arise in the wake of these shocks,” he noted.
He cautioned CEOs not to become complacent about recent economic improvements, such as the relative stabilization of the cedi and a drop in inflation.
“Our suspicion is that this optimism might have led more CEOs in Ghana to believe their businesses would survive the next decade without the need to reinvent their business models. If true, this could be fatal for most CEOs,” Ashiagbor warned.
Source: Lawrence Segbefia
