Your promises hurting the economy – IFS to Akufo-Addo

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has appealed to the Akufo-Addo government to ‘slow down’ on its desire to deliver on campaign promises as it is hurting the economy.

According to the economic think tank, the finances of the economy is not in the position to support the delivery of the numerous promises the NPP made during the 2016 electioneering.

“The NPP made so many promises before elections 2016 and I thought knowing the state of the economy, they would have redesigned their promises. Because the government wants to fulfill its promises at all cost against the economic standing of the country, there is so much pressure and money is not in the system like before.

“Borrowing is not the answer to the state of the economy. We need to figure out how to spend the resources we have. We should spend within our means so we can avoid debts we may not be able to pay in the future. Ex. President Kuffuor and the Late President. Mills were also leaders of parties who made promises but had to shelf some of them for sometime because of the state of the economy when they took over. I think the sitting government should slow down on some of its promises to help stabilize the economy,” a senior research fellow at IFS Dr. Saeed Boakye told Francis Abban on the Morning Starr Wednesday.

It comes after the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) gave a gloomy picture of the economic vitals on Tuesday.

“The provisional data that we have including oil shows that there is a decline from 6.7 percent to 5.7 percent between the first two quarters of 2019. So by the first quarter of 2019, the GDP growth was 6.7%. By the end of the second quarter, the economy is already decelerating at 5.7 percent so with the half-year going we expect that this trend should continue and probably end around 6.2 percent.

“the non-oil GDP growth also declined 1.7 percentage points, even more worrying the non-oil GDP growth was going about 6 percent in the first quarter and that declined to about 4.3 percent by the end of the second quarter. So the half-year real GDP growth of 5.7 percent is 1.9 percentage point below the budgeted target of the 7.6 percent. The real GDP growth of 5.7 percent of the second quarter of 2019 was also lower…than the corresponding figure of 2018,” Dr Charles Ackah, Senior Research Fellow at ISSER noted while presenting the 2019 mid-year review of the economy at a press conference in Accra.