Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the country’s vice president, recently explained what’s behind the economic crisis.
The respected economist claims that Ghana’s present dilemma is entire of its own doing.
The Vice President of Ghana made this claim during his address at the Standard Chartered Digital Banking Innovation & Fintech Festival in Accra.
He then implied that the government’s unprecedented trade surpluses made it very difficult to revive the economy without the participation of the people.
“The nature of production needs to change. You are seeing Ghana, consistently over the last five years, having more and more trade surpluses. This is like for the first time in about twenty years that we’ve consistently had trade surpluses on our balance of payments. At the same time, we have a lot of current accounts deficits, which means that a lot of the foreign exchange that we are earning from our trade doesn’t stay in Ghana.”
“And one of the areas where we have to address is to reduce the import dependency that we have as a country. But as the global economy is going to realign to the new reality with more self-reliance, Ghana cannot be left behind. We also have to look very closely at how we enhance domestic production and reduce dependence on imports for commodities that we can very easily produce here in Ghana.”
Imports of agricultural and associated goods into Ghana are expected to exceed $1.9 billion in 2021.2 This shows that Ghana continues to be a large importer of food items.
Also on October 30, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is slated to address the people of Ghana on the country’s faltering economy.
This follows repeated requests from the public for the President to address the country on the country’s economic woes.
According to Minister of Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, a cabinet retreat on the economy will be in place today and Friday, and the President will give his speech on Sunday.