The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Mission Chief for Ghana, Stéphane Roudet, has commended Ghana’s economic growth.
During an interview on Citi TV’s “The Point of View,” Mr. Roudet expressed that Ghana’s rapid economic recovery is both remarkable and heartening, as the country has exceeded the IMF’s projections for the year 2023.
He noted that the IMF’s initial projection for Ghana’s economic growth in 2023 was 1.5 percent. However, the first-half report indicates that the country’s economy is expanding at a 3 percent rate, a development he finds highly encouraging. This positive trend is expected to facilitate the smooth release of the second tranche of the $3 billion credit facility from the IMF.
“Ghana’s economic activities, I have to say, have surprised us on the outside. You will remember that in the programme, we were projecting economic growth of 1.5 percent for this year, and now we have the outcome for the first half of the year, and we are about 3 percent and so you can see that there are signs that are encouraging.”
“We were assessing that growth will be above 1.5 percent for this year and what we are seeing now is above that, so we will have to revise our growth projection in the context of this review and this is very good news because it means that in spite of the challenges that the Ghanaian economy has faced; the high inflation, the loss of market access for the government, in spite of that, the economy is resilient and growth is still around 3 percent and that very good news.“
The Ghanaian economy has attained much-needed stability as major economic indices such as inflation and the exchange rate continue to fall, restoring investor confidence, Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, has said.
He said this at a joint press conference with the IMF on attaining a Staff Level Agreement (SLA) after the first review of the IMF-Supported Post-Covid-19 Programme for Economic Growth.
Sounding optimistic about the future of the economy, he among other things enumerated that, the GDP Growth had rebounded strongly averaging 3.2% in first two quarters compared to 3.0% in same period in 2022 mainly on the back of growth in services (avg. 6.3%) and in Agriculture (avg. 6.2%).
‘’Latest Price development in August 2023 indicated a fall in headline inflation, after consecutive upward trends since May 2023. Headline inflation dropped to 40.1 percent, from 43.1 percent in July and 42.5 percent in June 2023, respectively,” he revealed.
‘’I am pleased to announce that the progress we sought to achieve is very much on course; the stability that the Ghanaian Economy was very much in need of has been achieved. We said we have ‘Turned the Corner’ and the major economic indicators such as inflation and exchange rate continues to drop and stabilise, and there is confidence returning in the economy,’’ Mr. Ofori-Atta added.