Ken Ofori-Atta, Finance Minister
Dr Adu Owusu-Sarkodie, an economics lecturer at the University of Ghana who doubles as a financial economist, Ghana is nowhere close to being a Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC).
He said this on the Happy Morning Show with Samuel Eshun on Happy 98.9FM.
The economist noted that per his calculations and understanding, the only legitimate concern we should have as Ghanaians should be the numerous debts owed by the country.
He said, ”we aren’t so bad to get to the HIPC stage. So there was no cause for alarm". Moving on, he mentioned that even in the economic crisis faced in the Covid-19 era, “we still are nowhere close to HIPC”.
Backing his claims with detailed evidence.
He stated, “Our GDP growth rate before Covid-19 was as low as 3.7% and an average of 7% but even with this, they have been projected to grow by 2%”.
Comparing Ghana to other countries he emphasized, “Ours is even better than other countries because most countries are in a recession and we’re not”.
He went ahead to say” Covid-19 has caused global health and economic crisis. We cannot isolate Ghana because the whole world is facing same or even worse challenges than we are”.
“Government must spend and borrow from external sources to help get the economy back on its feet and this is the right thing to do so there is nothing wrong especially in a difficult time such as now no economics book will argue against that,” he said.
