Ghana’s Finance Minister has defended the government’s management of the economy, saying there have been significant improvements.
Seth Tekper cited major economic policy decisions including specific investments in the power sector which he said prevented the country from sliding into a recession.
In the last three years, the country has gone through serious economic challenges, which compelled government to resort to the International Monetary Fund for help.
The opposition New Patriotic Party have argued that Ghana’s economy has collapsed making it difficult for Ghanaians to survive.
[contextly_sidebar id=”nImnIqkwIM2vuFy9GfGWNdPKtx8akRDZ”]But speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Friday, Seth Tekper made a case for what he called the prudent management of the economy.
“Within the last eight years there were investments that we made particularly in oil and gas. For instance the Atuabo gas processing plant which we all agree came in handy, the situation with dumsor would have been worse if we didn’t have Atuabo. It would have been worse if we were flaring the jubilee gas.”
“So we took a loan, got the pipelines, put a plant and we are processing our own gas. That is the first example. Then we started the exports…based on those mechanisms the economy grew, so you can see again specific action. Then we had gold, cocoa and later crude oil prices all going down. Then we decided to stabilise the economy through some tough measures. You would agree with me that today Ghana is not in recession. Some African countries that have gone through that are in recession. We are not in recession, yes we experienced a slowdown in growth but we never went into recession,” he added.
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By: Pearl Akanya Ofori/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @pearlakanya