Vice-President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia insists the current economic crisis the country is faced with is as result of the debilitating effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and the geopolitical tension between Russia and Ukraine.
Dr. Bawumia argued that the economy of the country was on the right track until the outbreak of the pandemic which brought activities in Ghana and around the world to a halt.
Just about when the world was covering from the challenges brought on it by the pandemic, he noted, the Russian/Ukrainian war broke out, pushing it into deeper crisis.
“Between 2017 and 2019, all the key economic indicators such as economic growth, agricultural growth, industry growth, interest rate, the fiscal deficit, exchange rate depreciation and the trade balance were all moving in the right direction,” he said.
“However, between 2020 and 2022, we experienced severe challenges, triggered by the pandemic which brought the world and our country to a halt”.
The situation in Ghana, he claimed, was compounded by debt incurred as result of the financial sector clean-up and payments for excess energy capacity, resulting in declining indicators and the country losing access to the international capital market.
“in addition to the external factors, there were two major items of expenditure that are critical to understanding the difficult economic situation we have faced and these are the banking sector cleanup and the energy sector excess capacity payments that we inherited,” he added.
He explained that this forced the country to seek support from the International Monetary Fund.
Dr. Bawumia said although Ghanaians may be tired of hearing the crisis being attributed to the pandemic and the war, it is the fact and cannot be denied.
“We may be tired of hearing it but there is no avoiding the fact that the Covid 19 pandemic and the Russian/Ukrainian war resulted in the greatest economic depression in the world since the 1930s with most countries recording negative GDP growth”.
