The Ranking Member of Parliament’s Finance Committee, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson has painted a gloomy picture of Ghana’s economy.
According to him, the fundamentals are so weak that it is likely to lead to a crash if urgent prudent measures are not put in place.
This comes at a time the Akufo-Addo led government has been downgraded by several International rating agencies, with the latest being Fitch, which downgraded the country’s Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘B-‘ from ‘B’ with a negative outlook.
The downgrade of Ghana’s IDRs and Negative Outlook reflect the sovereign’s loss of access to international capital markets in the second half of 2021, following a pandemic-related [COVID-19] surge in government debt.
Ghana has struggled with earlier efforts to raise revenue/GDP and public finances have been deteriorating even before the pandemic, albeit partly related to the clean-up in the financial and energy sector.
Commenting on the country’s economic outlook, Dr Forson expressed worry over the debt-to-GDP ratio which is over 80%.
He also accused the governmnet of massaging the public debt figures and accused them of underquoting it by more than ¢12 billion.
“For the avoidance of doubt, the public debt of Ghana for November 2021 which has been reported as ¢344.5bn representing 78.4% of GDP does NOT include: the Energy Sector Levy of ¢9.3bn, Daakye of ¢2.4 billion and the Sinohydro loan of ¢630 million. Ghana’s actual total public debt as of November 2021 was 357 billion which is some 81% of GDP.” the Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam MP said on his social media handles.
Projecting further, he added that “our public debt at Dec 2021 will be 365 billion cedis that is some 83% plus of GDP! Ghana is officially in a mess!”
Source: The Newsroom Online