<\/p>\n
\n Accra, Jan. 26, GNA – Economic and Finance experts say the COVID-19 pandemic, the banking sector clean-up and the energy sector challenges have exposed Ghana\u2019s \u201cfragile economic fundamentals.<\/p>\n
Dr Priscilla Twumasi Baffour, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Economics, University of Ghana (UG), Courage Boti, an Economist and Mr Pierre Frank Laporte, the World Bank Country, Africa, said issues about the economy were not about mismanagement but fragile fundamentals. <\/p>\n
They noted that though governments had over the years taken measures to make the economy strong, the fundamentals had not been resilient enough to withstand major shocks. <\/p>\n
Additionally, the sources of growth had not generated the required decent employment, thereby, making the economic fundamentals volatile. <\/p>\n
The economic fundamentals\u2014inflation, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), GDP to debt ratio, exchange rate, and gross international reserves\u2014are important in measuring the \u201cgeneral health\u201d of the economy. <\/p>\n
As such, the fundamentals, [when strong enough and stable], help in driving investment into the country and propel development. <\/p>\n
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra, Mr Boti, said: \u201cOur economy has never at any point in time been very resilient to the point that we\u2019ll say that it is mismanagement that is causing what is happening now. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery effort to make it resilient was at its formative stage and the gains were very fragile,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe fragile gains made on the macro economy were tested by COVID and all of them went trembling. Currently, the economy is challenged because the fundamentals that were put together didn\u2019t get to the level where it can withstand the shock,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
The Economist explained that it would take handlers of the economy some ample time to be able to build such an economy, whose fundamentals would be resilient to any form of shock. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no one solution for it [the economic fragility] but it\u2019s about consistency in the initiatives and the efforts that bring about the stability we\u2019re looking for, to the point where they become irreversible,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Delivering a keynote address at the Annual New Year School, Mr Laporte, the World Bank Country, Africa, said \u201cnotwithstanding Ghana\u2019s strong pre-COVID growth, it came into the crisis with a certain degree of fiscal fragility, and a level of borrowing that was not matched with a required level of revenue mobilisation.\u201d <\/p>\n
For her part, Dr Baffour, said, there was the need to match the sources of growth with employment to prevent the volatility, which would make the growth reflect in people\u2019s pocket. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor us as a country, the challenge has been a consistent growth path; we seem to be doing great at certain times then we take a huge dip. When you look at when Ghana obtained a lower middle-income status in 2011, we grew at 12 percent plus, but that was on the back of the discovery of oil and the following year we couldn\u2019t keep up,\u201d she noted. <\/p>\n
Mr John Ampontuah Kumah, a Deputy Minister of Finance, said, \u201cthese are the realities of the times, but if you listen to international news, you realise that Ghana is not alone.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cRecovering from all these things may take a while, but I assure you that the managers of this economy understand what they\u2019re doing and we\u2019re on the right path of growth. If we\u2019re able to maintain our growth rate consistently for five to ten years, we\u2019re going to see massive transformation of our country,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
GNA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Accra, Jan. 26, GNA – Economic and Finance experts say the COVID-19 pandemic, the banking sector clean-up and the energy sector challenges have exposed Ghana\u2019s \u201cfragile economic fundamentals. \u201d Dr Priscilla Twumasi Baffour, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Economics, University of Ghana (UG), Courage Boti, an Economist and Mr Pierre Frank Laporte, the World […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":768844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[261,3010,3138,3397,1964],"class_list":["post-768843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-covid19","tag-economic","tag-exposed","tag-fragile","tag-fundamentals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}