Ghana In Deep Trouble, Public Debt Shoots Above HIPC Levels at GHC 332 billion

The latest Summary of Economic and Financial Data by the Bank of Ghana has revealed that Ghana’s public debt stock is hit more than GHC 332 billion. Out of this figure, the Akufo Addo administration alone is responsible for racking up some GHC 200 billion in less than five years.

With the data, Ghana’s debt to GDP is about 80%. This means of all the productive activities in the country, 80% amounts to debt.

The government’s debt guzzling behaviour was on full display when in less than two months, between April 2021 and May 2021, the Akufo Addo administration piled up a public debt stock of more than GHC27.8 billion.

In March 2021, the total debt stock stood at ¢304.6 billion, and the significant increase in the debt stock is due to the $3 billion Eurobond raised in March 2021 as well as the huge borrowing on the domestic market.

These terrifying levels of debt have practically put the country deep into the debt unsustainability levels that drove the country to opt for the infamous IMF programme of Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) in early 2000 by the John Kufuor administration.

The debt levels of Ghana fit prediction models of the IMF, the World Bank and other international agencies who predicted that the country will be in a deep mess by the trend of borrowing by the Akufo Addo administration.

They have warned the government that at the rate of its debt unsustainability, the country will be headed for a slippery slope where loans for both private businesses and concessionary loans by the government will start attracting higher interest rates which will further aggravate the current dire cost of living in the country.

However, the Akufo Addo administration is in no way slowing down in its debt-guzzling. 

Critics have noted worryingly that a bulk of the debt is self-inflicted to serve the private interest of Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta who is incidentally a nephew to President Akufo Addo.

Ken Ofori-Atta who has been criticised strongly for his eagerness to seek loans or float Eurobonds for Ghana, has planted his private company, Databank Financial Services as the main transaction broker for Ghana’s Eurobond.

The other company given the juicy deal as transaction advisor to the government of Ghana is that of Charles Adu-Boahene, a Minister of State at the Finance Ministry. Adu Boahene is practically a protégé of Ken Ofori-Atta.