Ghana Budget Blues

Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta delivered his mid-year budget speech yesterday (25 July) in a radically different register than most of his presentations between 2019 and 2022. This time, he said that "this state of affairs is quite a painful one for me to report to you... This is not how we envisioned the economy... Recent challenges have overtaken us...The downside risks about which the IMF had previously warned have now materialised." His speech is preparation for a sought after IMF programme. See: Ghana's J Curve.

SIGNIFICANCE – PREAMBLE

In sum, the government has been humbled by events – in particular, 29.8% consumer price inflation, 38% producer price inflation, 3.3% year-on-year growth in Q1 2022, 22% currency depreciation between January and May 2022, 78.3% of GDP public debt, investment outflows and constrained access to international capital markets, below target revenue performance and above target expenditure partly due to interest payments. Today, the