Ghana’s economy is growing better than the Mahama administration left it – The economic think tank

The economic think tank the Institute of Progressive Governance (IPG) has said that Ghana’s economy is growing better than the Mahama administration left it, despite the challenges it has faced since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Contributing to a panel discussion on Movement TV and MyABC TV on Saturday (22 June 2024), George Domfe, a fellow at the think tank, said economic growth rates are the best determinant of how well an economy is performing and that first-quarter growth for 2024 has exceeded that of John Dramani Mahama when he was leaving office at the end of 2016.

“Ghana is growing at 4.7%, as the first-quarter growth rate indicates. This figure, when juxtaposed against what the NDC left when leaving office, means that the economy is doing far better than the 3.4% President Mahama left us with,” Dr Domfe said.

The IPG fellow recalled that Ghana’s economy grew at 8.1% in 2017 and at 6.5% in 2019, dipping to 0.54% in the year 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The economy was hugely hit by COVID-19, and that showed in the growth figures the economy recorded at the time,” Dr Domfe said. “However, it recovered strongly in 2021 as it grew at 5.4%.

“Unfortunately, the Russia-Ukraine conflict affected the global economy [and] Ghana was not left out. This was evident in the growth rate recorded in 2022 (3.1%).”

According to IPG, the cut in public expenditure from GHC227 billion to GHC190 billion gravely affected growth for 2023. Even so, though the International Monetary Fund projected a growth rate of just 1.5% for the Ghanaian economy that year, it grew at 2.9%.

Dr Domfe, a development economist and senior research fellow at the Centre for Social Policy Studies (CSPS) at the College of Humanities, University of Ghana, also recalled that Ghana’s economy grew at 2.8% in 2014, 2.1% in 2015 and 3.4% in 2016. These figures, he noted, were the rates attained under the former president John Dramani Mahama.

Domfe also cited figures sourced from the Bank of Ghana showing economic growth rates since 1992 and noted that the rates reached under John Mahama were better only than those attained under the late president Jerry John Rawlings.