IMANI’s Bright Simons exposes BoG over ‘cooked’ debt to GDP figures

The Bank of Ghana recently released some figures as part of the BoG’s Summary of Macroeconomic Data and these figures, MyNewsGh.com learns, are questionable as they do not represent the truth.

This is according to Bright Simons, who is Vice President of the policy think tank, IMANI.

Addressing the media, the Governor of the Bank of Ghana had said:

“The total public debt declined from 69.8 percent of GDP (GH¢142.5 billion) at the end of 2017 to 60.0 percent of GDP (GH¢145.0 billion) at the end of February 2018, reflecting a higher GDP base. Of the total, domestic debt was GH¢68.2 billion (47.0% of total debt) and external debt was GH¢76.8 billion (53.0% of total debt“.

These figures, IMANI believes are not reflective of the truth as Debt as a percentage of GDP was rather in his opinion “somewhere between 68-70% and NOT 60%” as BoG put it.

He called on the technocrats at the Central Bank “to do the right thing” and retract the document for correction.

He wrote on his Facebook wall:

“Okay, after a bunch of professional economists and finance whizs took a careful look at the data, it is safe to say that Public debt as a % of GDP is somewhere between 68% and 71%, and NOT the 60% that the Bank of Ghana has reported in its latest Summary of Macroeconomic Data. We expect that the professionals there will do the right thing and promptly retract the document for substitution forthwith. Thank you.”