IMF revises up Ghana’s growth forecast

Accra — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Monday it had revised up Ghana’s growth forecast for 2024 to reflect the West African nation’s improved economic stability.

Ghana, which produces gold, cocoa and oil, is gradually emerging from its worst economic crisis in a generation that pushed it into default. It turned to the IMF in 2022 for a $3bn loan programme.

“Ghana has truly come a long way,” Stephane Roudet, IMF mission chief for Ghana, told a joint press conference with Ghana’s finance ministry on Monday, adding that reforms to boost revenue and build reserves were yielding results.

“Economic growth has proven more resilient than initially envisaged,” Roudet said. “Therefore, we are revising our growth projection up from 2.8% to 3.1% for 2024.”

Ghana’s central bank governor Ernest Addison, speaking during the joint briefing, said that Ghana’s macroeconomic outlook was improving dramatically.

“The Bank of Ghana has accumulated foreign exchange reserves to the tune of $907m. Nearly double what we have in the IMF programme targets,” Addison said.

But he noted that Ghana’s consumer inflation was still high at 23.1%, relative to the central bank's end-of-year target of 15% plus or minus 2%, despite the sharp improvement from around 54% in December 2022.

Finance minister Mohammed Amin Adam said Ghana’s economy was on the recovery path and, as part of efforts to deal with its debt burden, it had reached an agreement with independent power producers to restructure legacy debt of about $1bn.

“This will certainly provide some fiscal relief and savings over the life of the power purchase agreements as well as guarantee a more reliable supply of power,” he said.

Ghana’s power sector has grappled with widespread unpaid debts that have led to a sharp increase in outages amid a standoff between power producers and the government.

Reuters