Akufo Addo Sends Ghana Into Pre-Revolution Inflation At 23.6%

Latest data shows that the Akufo Addo administration has driven inflation in Ghana to its worst in the past 18 years, at 23.6%.

However, some critics think that the rate could have been worse and could have been on the same levels as during the era of military rule and coup d’etats had Ghana not rebased its economy in 2010 and followed it up by a rebasing of its Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket in 2013.

The latest inflation rate is the highest since 2004, climbing to 23.6% from 19.4% in March, Government Statistician Samuel Kobina Annim told reporters Wednesday in Accra.

Disturbingly, experts are warning that inflation has not peaked yet and that the situation would only get worse.

This makes nonsense of Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia’s boast while in opposition that the Akufo Addo administration was going to be the panacea for Ghana’s economic woes during the regime of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The latest data shows that the Akufo Addo-led administration had worsened Ghana’s inflation situation in comparison to the highest inflation ever recorded by the NDC.

This correlates with the fact that the Akufo Addo administration had been the worse debt guzzler since Ghana’s independence in 1957. The government has borrowed more than all previous governments combined at over GHC 250 billion compared to the country’s total debt of around GHC 150 billion when the regime took over power.

Currently, Ghana’s public debt stands at a staggering GHC 350 billion or some 83% of its GDP.

The macro-economic fundamentals have practically collapsed under the Akufo Addo regime and it is gradually being evidenced in the runaway rate of inflation, foreign exchange and external reserves.

According to the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), the country’s headline inflation is now more than twice the top of the central bank’s target band of 6% to 10% and has been above the range for eight months.

For the first time in 29 months imported items surpassed locally produced items, Annim said.

Food inflation surged to 26.6% year-on-year from 22.4% in March and non-food inflation accelerated to 21.3% in April from 17% the previous month. Prices jumped 5.8% in the month.

“The monetary policy committee of the central bank will have a nail-biting decision to make,” Courage Martey, an economist with Accra-based Databank Group, said by phone ahead of the release.

The S&P Global Ghana Purchasing Managers’ Index has been below 50 since February, indicating a deterioration in business conditions.