World Bank vindicates Dr. Bawumia’s public debt analysis

The World Bank has confirmed Vice President Dr Bawumia’s pre-election analysis of Ghana’s public debt. The Bank in analyzing data between 2013 and 2016 said that Ghana’s public debt has reached distress levels.

The conclusions by the World Bank affirms similar conclusions reached by the then NPP running mate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia at a public lecture organized in Accra ahead of December, 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections.

Speaking on the State of the economy at that time, Dr Bawumia observed that "by the end of 2008 following the adoption and implementation of the HIPC initiative, the government’s policy framework of fiscal discipline, the country’s debt to GDP ratio, had declined from 189% in 2000, to 32% of GDP by 2008. Indeed from independence in 1957 to 2008, Ghana’s total debt was 9.5% Billion Cedis; however; in the last seven years alone under this NDC government, Ghana’s total debt has ballooned from 99.5 billion cedis to 100 billion cedis in 2015; and a 105 billion cedis by May 2016. In fact, 66% of Ghana’s debt from independence; has been accumulated under the presidency of John Mahama in just the last three and half years.”

He concluded that Ghana had become a ‘’debt distressed country’’.

However, Ghana’s public debt situation has improved in the last fiscal year. The available data showed that public debt as a percentage of GDP reduced from over 73% in 2016 to 68.9% at the end of 2017, signalling Government’s attempt to control the debt situation.