Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Johnson Asiamah, has given the strongest indication of Ghana’s economy being affected by extraneous factors this year despite measures being adopted to strengthen it.
According to the Governor, global factors could have spillover effects on inflation, capital flows and exchange rate stability in the 2025 fiscal year.
This admission by the Governor is a wide departure from the positions held by then candidate John Mahama and the leadership of the NDC.
The Akufo-Addo administration faced significant challenges when the deadly coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, struck.
COVID-19 brought the global economy on its knees as production levels went considerably down, leading to higher levels of inflation and currency volatility.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia compounded the global economic crisis as Ghana, just like other countries, also suffocated from its attendant consequences.
Oil prices skyrocketed as a result of sanctions on Russia which produced large volumes of crude oil. Farming and industrial outputs fell, thereby causing shortages in many European and African economies.
These two major catastrophic events hurt the Ghanaian economy so much so that it plunged it into a recession.
The then Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, government’s communicators and experts in economics and finance in government explained that Ghana’s economic crisis was largely caused by global factors.
Mr. Mahama and his team rejected that point, saying it was the negligence, incompetence and mismanagement of the government that led the country into economic crisis.
They told the handlers of the economy under President Akufo-Addo not to blame any global financial crisis but themselves for not living up to expectations.
Today, the Governor of the central bank, John Mahama’s appointee, has told us that the global economic crisis which NPP highlighted and the NDC said it was nonexistent, is likely going to impact negatively on the economy.
This speaks to the level of dishonesty displayed by President John Mahama before the 2024 elections. He dismissed the point made by the NPP that whatever crisis the economy found itself in was homegrown and had no relationship with external factors. The cat is out of the bag now.
WMN.