Accra, Ghana, November 18, 2019//-Directors of the Ministry of Finance have attributed the successes chalked at turning Ghana’s economy around within three years to proactive management.
This they say is paying off. Coming from a steep decline of 3.4% of gross domestic Product (GDP) to about 7% in 2019 and projected to higher in 2020.
“All the economic indicators are currently pointing to a better management of the economy than the previous managers”, a director at the Ministry of Finance, Kwame Gyesaw told journalists at a post 2020 Budget engagement with journalists in Accra today.
The budget was presented to Parliament by the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta is critical in various respects: it is an election year budget and governments under the fourth Republic always overspend but the current administration assured that it won’t follow the path of others.
The 2020 budget is the first, since 2015, to be done without an IMF programme because of the government successful completion of the derailed IMF programme last April.
It is the first election year budget to be prepared under the Fiscal Responsibility Act (2018), which places a 5 per cent cap on fiscal deficit in any given year.
In 2020, the government will make a strong push on the under-listed priorities in order to consolidate the gains achieved within the last three years and to drive its economic transformation forward in line with the President’s Consolidated Programme and the Ghana Beyond Aid vision, Mr Gyesaw, said.
According to him, the increased economic growth had been the result of increased agricultural and industrial output.
As a result of the successful Planting for Food and Jobs Program (PFJ), agricultural GDP growth had increased from 2.9 percent in 2016 to 4.8 percent in 2018 and projected to reach 6.4 percent in 2019.
Industry has also seen a recovery with industry growth increasing from 4.3 percent in 2016 to 10.6 percent in 2018, and projected to grow by 8.8 percent in 2019.
Better 2020
Following our significant progress in restoring macroeconomic stability over the past 32 months, the government would continue to implement policies and programmes to ensure the fulfilment of our promises to our people. The following macroeconomic targets are set for the medium term (2020-2023), he added.
based on the overall macroeconomic objective of “Consolidating the Gains for Growth, Jobs, and Security”, the following specific macroeconomic targets have been set for the 2020 fiscal year:
Overall Real GDP growth of 6.8 percent;
Non-Oil Real GDP growth of 6.7 percent;
End-period inflation of 8.0 percent;
Fiscal deficit of 4.7 percent of GDP;
Primary surplus of 0.8 percent of GDP; and
Gross International Reserves to cover not less than 3.5 months of imports of goods and services.
Another director of the ministry, Alexander Amankwa Poku was quick to add that to further strengthen their commitment to maintaining fiscal discipline, the focus of fiscal policy in 2020 is to ensure that the fiscal deficit, which remains the principal fiscal anchor is reduced to low and sustainable levels, enough to reduce the overall public debt burden and create the needed fiscal space over the medium-term.
African Eye Report
