Abstract

The paper investigated the short-run and long-run relationship between external merchandise Agricultural trade
and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows into the Agricultural sector of Ghana. The study employed
Granger’s instantaneous causality to assess the short-run relationship and feedback model to investigate the
long-run relationships. Following the existence of unit-roots for the variables as well as cointegration, the
Toda-Yamamoto procedure was followed for the estimation of the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models. In the
short-run, the coefficient for FDI inflows and imports were statistically significant. The negative sign pointed to
a substitution or replacing relationship between the two variables. The coefficients between exports and FDI
though negative, were not statistically significant. In the long-run, there was a feedback between imports and
FDI. Exports caused FDI but not the reverse. Notwithstanding the transitory substitution effect of imports and
FDI, in the long-run, imports and FDI complemented each other. Trade and FDI promotion should be pursued
together.

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