The Impact of Economic Indicators on Financial Performance of Non-financial Firms on Ghana Stock Exchange

Abstract

Financial performance is one of the basic indicators that investors and creditors check in accessing the performance of firms. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the impact of economic indicators on financial performance of quoted non-financial firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). The study focuses on the impact of RealGDP, Exchange rate, Inflation, Unemployment and Interest rate as determinant of economic indicators whereas Sales growth, Company size, Leverage and Efficiency from firms specific are used as controlled variables in checking the effect of these indicators on financial performance of these firms. ROA and ROE were used as proxies for financial performance of the listed firms. The study employed a panel data of 21 listed non-financial firms from the period of 2008 to 2017. The result revealed that Real GDP and inflation have significant positive impact on ROE. On the contrarily, economic indicators used for this study showed no level of significance with ROA. Company size recorded positive and negative significant impact on ROA and ROE respectively, sales growth and efficiency were statistically significant with ROA. The study recommends government and regulatory authorities to come out with good policies that will help boost the economic activities in the country and drop inflation rate since they have the tendency of affecting non-financial firms’ performance. Moreover, management must ensure full utilization of its internal resources by focusing on diversification and expansion since company size, efficiency and sales growth affect the return on assets and equity of firms. In addition, management should warily consider inflation rate when making financial decision due to its impact on financial performance.