Dr. Michael Adongo, a Development Economist, has stated that Ghana’s economy is still in distress considering the serious Debt to GDP level, record-high inflation rate and the recent poor performance of the Ghana cedi.
Dr. Adongo, speaking on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show on Monday, May 16, 2022, advanced an argument saying that it is too early to for the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta to say that the economy is on the right track.
He likened the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta’s management of the economy to that of a pastor on the pulpit.
“Government wants to keep a posture, an assuring posture, one that assures the financial market and capital market so that it can borrow. This talk of we are on right, we are doing well is to finesse the data to get the capital and bonds market to change their perspectives about the Ghanaian economy so that we can go in to borrow. Borrowing will bring us back to square one if not worst. So on the scores of the economics and the fundamentals; I think that it is too early, too little and actually no concrete data to prove that we are on the right track. The economy is still in distress. You can understand the finance minister; he runs the economy like a pastor on the pulpit. Some of these things he is seeing them when they are not there,” he said.
He disagreed with the Finance Minister’s assertion that the economy is on the right track saying that his assertion is based on revised GDP projections from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS).
“The finance minister’s argument is based on revised GDP projections and because the debt to GDP ratio is of course a proportion, once you increased your GDP ratio the debt to GDP ratio is going to decrease. I think for April they were some revised projections by the Ghana Statistical Services that we were going to grow around 4, 5 percent or so and that brings about some optimism that we are on the right track.”
Mr Adongo continued that “they are some of the things that we lost, some enterprises went down and many of them are trying to come back. They are not performing at the level they were performing before the pre-pandemic and pre-economic crises, so you have to be careful. Secondly, you also have to be careful that the introduction of the E-levy is going to hit businesses and that impact has not been factored on the GDP. We don’t know how it is going to play on the GDP, so it is very early in the day to start saying we are on track.”
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Osuman Kaapore Tahiru|Ghana
