The Ghana Statistical Service in today’s announcement puts Ghana’s real *GDP growth for 2024 at 5.7%*. The budget target was 3.1% revised to 4%.
With this GDP figure out, our new *public debt to GDP ratio for 2024 now stands at 61.8%*.
This is what the Finance Minister is expected to announce in the budget that will be presented tomorrow.
This is a massive drop in the public debt to GDP ratio from 80.4% in 2020. This is also below the pre-COVID-19 level when the debt to GDP ratio was 65.7%.
With these developments, the NPP government’s debt management strategy worked perfectly and quickly restored the debt sustainability of the country.
This means that Ghana could reach the *debt sustainability target of 55%* under the IMF program earlier than the planned 2028 target year if only the new government continues to implement the debt management strategy.
The release of GDP figures also confirms that the rebound in the economy was real.
A GDP growth of 5.7% in 2024 has been the highest since 2020. It follows the recovery in 2023 when the economy grew by 2.9% above a target of 1.5%.
The economy defied all odds and posted this appreciable growth despite coming from a global economic crisis between 2020 and 2022.
The NDC since assuming government has been claiming the economy was badly managed by the NPP. These developments showed that the economy was doing well before the NDC took over.
We have also picked up intelligence about data manipulation in the fiscal outturn for 2024 as the Minister for Finance is trying hard to manufacture a narrative to support the NDC’s baseless claims of inheriting a bad economy. The Minister should be candid enough to report only verified data as his primary responsibility is to make payments only based on verified claims.