THE ECONOMIC REALITY AND DR BAWUMIA’S EXPECTED COOKED NARRATIVE TOMORROW, 7TH APRIL, 2022. 

By Issifu Seidu Kudus Gbeadese 

(Executive Secretary-Baskin Africa)

What is Dr Bawumia coming to tell us different from what we know already? The economy is not figures which can be conveniently manufactured to do propaganda, but what the many poor Ghanaians feel when they go to the market; when they go to buy fuel at the pumps; when they go to buy milk and sugar at the super markets. In its worse form, the few women who sell their produce in the markets struggle to just sell and feed themselves, yet the buyers can’t find money to buy. 

Even assuming economics were just only the figures (not cooked), Dr Bawumia cannot still dodge but to tell us how terrible the situation has become under him as the head of the Economic Management Team. Under Dr Bawumia, the uncooked but real  microeconomic indicators have this to show:

1. Debt to GDP is hovering around 80%—far above the sustainable threshold. Meanwhile the chunk that has been borrowed were not invested in the real sector but into consumption related expenditure. 

2. Inflation is hovering around 15.2%, the worse in more than a decade and half 

3. A budget deficit of about 15%, the worse in about two decades.

4. The dollar is selling at about GHC 8 to $1, with the cedi depreciating by about 20% in just a quarter. 

5. Unemployment is at its peak, compounding an already worse security situation in the country. 

6. Ghana is rated as one for the worse countries to do business—with a very hostile business environment to even indigenous entrepreneurs. 

7. The government has to borrow to even pay statutory funds like common fund and others because, just three line items (Interest payments, wages and salaries and amortization) have swallowed our tax revenue. Nothing is left for capital investments. 

As we speak, a gallon of petrol which was sold at GHC 15 in 2016 is now selling at about GHC 46. Most commodity prices have more than quadrupled in percentage and in real terms. The table is a microcosm of the Ghanaian economy and not what Dr Bawumia will come to tell us tomorrow, 7th April, 2022.