Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, remains confident that the government is making progress with regards to ensuring the country's economic recovery.

0

While presenting the 2024 budget statement in Parliament on Wednesday, the minister for the umpteenth time said "Ghana has paid its dues, has turned the corner and getting back on track."

1

He noted that over the past 7 years, every sector has been positively impacted, every household has been positively impacted by government's social intervention programmes and every region has also been positively impacted.

2

He cited the growth in macroeconomic variables as a reason for his assertion that the economy is making a recovery.

3

Inflation started declining from 54.1 percent in December 2022 to 35.2 percent in October 2023. The Minister noted that despite a 1.5 percent projected growth, the economy galloped at a remarkable pace, and clocked an average of 3.2 percent growth in the first two quarters of the year.

4

"We turned the corner when the currency, which had been under severe pressure over the past two years, depreciated by a modest 6.4 percent cumulatively from February to date, compared to 53.9 percent over the same period in 2022. The performance of the Cedi is also a reflection of the fact that confidence is back, revenues have improved, and that the recovery is indeed real and is here to stay.

5

"We turned the corner when companies started going back to the job markets to hire workers; We turned the corner when the International credit rating agencies, which have not been favourable to Ghana in recent years, started being positive about our economy; and We turned the corner when the Banking industry started to record and report a profit-after-tax growth of 43.8 percent (GH¢6.2 billion); we turned the corner when in record time we completed the IMF 1st Staff Review of 6 Performance Criteria, 3 Indicative Targets and 3 Structural Benchmarks," he added.

6

Meanwhile, Mr Ofori-Atta says despite these successes, "we have to do more to reinforce our stability and guarantee decent jobs with good pay for the young people."

7

According to him, government's focus will be to deliver "even more investment across the real sector to place our economy on a firm growth trajectory that will create more jobs, safeguards our climate prospects and deeply entrench Ghana as the seed country for Africa’s development renaissance."

8