Ghana’s economy not slipping back into a mess, President Akuffo Addo assures

This, he said, will make the country not to slip back into the economic mess that was bequeathed to him by the previous administration.

“My Government continues to demonstrate its commitment and determination to ensuring that the habits and sins of past managers of our public finances are no longer visited on this or future generations”, he said.

President Akuffo-Addo said this while speaking at the 8th edition Ghana Economic Forum organised in Accra.

According to him, his administration has over the past three years in office been preoccupied with implementing policies that have since set the country on a path of prosperity and to the realisation of the broader vision of a Ghana Beyond Aid.

He said since 2017, the Ghanaian economy has been growing consistently above 7%, and, in the last two years, has been amongst the world’s fastest-growing economies.

“Indeed, the IMF projects Ghana’s economy, this year, to have one of the world’s highest growth rates of 7.6%. Inflation for September stood at 7.6%, in single digits, the lowest in over two decades. Our exports are growing healthily; our trade balance account, for the first time in more than a decade, recorded a surplus in 2017, maintained it in 2018, and we expect to maintain the surplus for this year as well. We have brought the fiscal deficit down to 4.5%. Our external reserves, as at June 2019, stood at 4.3 months of import cover,” he noted.

Adding that due to the prudent economic policy interventions instituted by his administration, the country’s macroeconomic indices are pointing in the right direction, “and it comes as no surprise, therefore, that, today, Ghana is the leading recipient of foreign direct investment in West Africa”.

The President continued that the policy interventions and prudent management of the resources have helped his government to finance his Government’s flagship policies and programmes such as the Free Senior High School, which is currently enrolling some 1.2 million pupils; the programme for “Planting for Food and Jobs”; which has led to the revival of Ghanaian agriculture, bringing in its wake a bumper harvest in 2018 and exports of significant quantities of foodstuffs to Ghana’s neighbours, with the same expected for 2019."