Ghana’s economic situation deteriorating by the hour; let’s brace ourselves for difficult 6 months of our lifetime – Dr Ato Forson

Ghana’s economic situation is deteriorating by the hour. This is the warning by Ranking Member of Parliament’s Finance Committee, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson.

According to him, the next six months will prove to be very difficult moments for the ordinary Ghanaian.

The economy is said to be in a precarious condition with skyrocketing inflation, rising interest rates, exchange rate depreciation and increasing energy cost culminating in the government returning to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for respite.

Ahead of the conclusion of a package from the IMF, the country had to fall on a $750 million loan facility to help shore up the rapidly dwindling reserves of the Bank of Ghana which had declined from $9 billion to about $3 billion.

The above developments, the report also added had left  These challenges are further exacerbated by the rapidly dwindling reserves of the Bank of Ghana which have declined from US$9 billion to about US$3 billion. With a monthly demand of over US$600 million, the reserves of the central bank may be exhausted in few months if urgent steps are not taken to shore up the countries reserves.”

Commenting on these developments on Tuesday, August 16, 2022, Dr Forson painted a gloomy economic outlook for the next 6 months.

“Our economic situation is deteriorating by the hour. Let’s brace ourselves for a very difficult 6months of our lifetime. It has just started,” the Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam MP sounded the alarm bells.

Explaining further he called for a “national dialogue on the economy for everyone to understand the need to go through the worse economic pain in our lifetime before it gets better. This is needed to save our democracy, if you keep the problem away from the people but rather blame it on Putin, the people will not level with you when you start to take the hard economic decisions to fix the mess. The fixing won’t be easy, it will require a lot of sacrifices and buy-in. Don’t pretend.”