Report has shown that Ghana will not meet its 2019 economic growth predictions tagged at 7.6% here’s why

The research further showed that the economic growth predictions for the year which were initially tagged at 7.6% will not be met.

The Senior Research Fellow at ISSER, Dr Charles Ackah who presented the 2019 mid-year review of the economy stated that it is likely the country may miss the projected growth for 2019.

“The provisional data that we have including oil shows that there is a decline from 6.7 per cent to 5.7 percent between the first two quarters of 2019. So, by the first quarter of 2019, the GDP growth was 6.7%. By the end of the second quarter, the economy is already decelerating at 5.7 percent so with the half-year going we expect that this trend should continue and probably end around 6.2 percent," he said.

He added that “the non-oil GDP growth also declined 1.7 percentage points, even more worrying the non-oil GDP growth was going about 6 percent in the first quarter and that declined to about 4.3 percent by the end of the second quarter.

“So, the half-year real GDP growth of 5.7 percent is 1.9 percentage point below the budgeted target of the 7.6 percent. The real GDP growth of 5.7 percent of the second quarter of 2019 was also lower than the corresponding figure of 2018,” he noted.

Dr Ackah, hence, urged the government to have a re-look at some of its flagship programs like free SHS, NABCO and some ministries which he says are having an impact on spending without necessarily providing the desired results.