Stop wrong diagnosis of Ghana’s economic problems – Mahama tells Int’l diplomats

Former President John Dramani Mahama has advised International diplomats to heed the facts and realities of the Ghanaian economy and stop the wrong diagnosis of Ghana’s economic problems.

The MD of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Ivanova Georgieva-Kinova has attributed the current economic challenge facing Ghana to external factors such as the Russia-Ukraine war and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are also recognising that this shock has exhausted our people,” she said. “People are tired of the pandemic and now they are hit a second time with inflation.”

“In many countries, the fiscal space is gone. When you look at the debt situation, for 25% of emerging markets that is not sustainable, just think of Sri Lanka and many countries that are in this position,” Georgieva-Kinova said.

“Actually, we see a country with strong economy, with strong fundamentals like Ghana, in a situation, in which it is harder to tap into markets because of these exogenous shocks, and for poor countries, it is over 60% that are in debt stress,” the IMF boss said.

But the former leader contended that the country is in a mess due to the bad policies of the government, which contributed massively to the dire state of affairs.

“The consequences of the government’s ill-adviced policies such as the botched, insensitive and dubious cost in closing down locally owned banks, unbridled levels of corruption and lack of accountability including the mismanagement of COVID-19 funds, unconventional borrowing practices riddled with opaqueness and conflicts of interest, resulting in an unsustainable debt envelope, costly, experimental and untested programmes, etc., cannot be ignored in understanding the current dire state of the Ghanaian Economy.

“Therefore, the rhetoric that emanates from international diplomats must reflect local realities. The Ghanaian economy must be managed first for the Ghanaian who lives and experiences it daily, not just for an international audience,” he wrote in a Facebook post a while ago.

-By starrfm|103.5FM|Ghana