A senior Lecturer on Economics at the University of Ghana, Dr. Agyapomaa Gyeke-Dako has refuted claims that Ghana’ economy is in a mess because of poor management by the government.
Speaking to Class FM in an interview, she said before Covid-19 government was managing the economy impressively and Ghana’s economy was growing at an appreciable rate.
According to her, things became difficult due to the impact of the global pandemic.
“So, if I’m looking at the data before COVID, the macro data before COVID and I’m speaking to the data, then I wouldn’t be able to say that we were already mismanaging the economy before COVID. When COVID set in, what did we do? There were a lot of freebies.
“2020 was quite a difficult year: COVID had set in, we weren’t mobilising enough revenue as a country and we haven’t been able to mobilise enough revenue anyway, as a country; but then there was also a lot of spending as well,” Dr. Gyeke-Dako shared.
The economist continued, “Remember a lot of freebies were given; we had almost everything being free: utilities were free, etc., and, so, if you are having fiscal challenges now, we should understand where those fiscal challenges are coming from. There’s no free lunch. We’re having to bear the brunt of the free things that we actually got during COVID.
“There’s no doubt about that. That’s what we are paying for. That’s what we are having to pay for now. So, all those things that were given to us for free, we are having to pay for them now, so, I wouldn’t really say the economy has been mismanaged [before COVID] because the data before [COVID] doesn’t really point to that.”
