The 2025 budget will confirm how bad the economy is – Kwakye Ofosu

“If Stephen Amoah said the economy we inherited is better than the one we left in 2016, it is palpably untrue,” said Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Minister of State in charge of Government Communications, in an interview with JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, March 1. He also said that the upcoming budget presentation on March 11 will confirm that the economy inherited by the current administration is in a worse state than they left it in 2016.

As evidence of the economic downturn, Kwakye Ofosu cited the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP), calling it “the harshest economic policy ever implemented under the Fourth Republic, if not in the entire history of Ghana.” He clarified that “1.3 million people went through excruciating hardship because the money they were expecting from government after buying bonds was not going to come. They had to accept drastically reduced interest rates and extended maturities.” He also pointed out that there is a good reason why the President did not focus on the economic indicators in his State of the Nation Address (SONA).

“There are roughly eighteen indicators, and the finance minister will go into depth about each one when he proposes the budget on March 11th. And all the others are worse than what they inherited if you exclude the growth rate,” he said.

He also denied that there was a positive primary balance left over from the previous administration.

The claim that they left a positive main balance is untrue. They left a target of 0.5%, which was intended to be a surplus,” he said.