Former Finance Minister, Seth Terkper believes the current management of the Ghanaian economy could have been better than it already is.
He made this assertion in relation to the assessment of our economy in the past four (4) years.
Not disputing the fact that the government tried to bring the economy back to its feet even after facing a global financial crisis, he believes that more could have been done to improve our economy.
In an interview with Samuel Eshun on e.TV Ghana’s Fact Sheet, he said, “Coming out of the global financial crisis and coming out of the crude oil prices in 2015 and 2016, there were opportunities going into 2017. If I may mention, first the banking sector crisis we faced as a result of the global financial crisis and the fallen crude oil prices had a solution in Energy Sector Levy Act (ESLA)”.
Giving a detailed breakdown of why he made this statement he went on to say, per government’s own projections ESLA is estimated to be doing about GHc41billion between 2024-2025. Per his breakdown, “The total estimation for liabilities, banking sector, energy and others for which ESLA had put in place can be put at maybe 24 or 25billion. That tells you that there should be enough resources to have resolved substantially some of the issues relating to that sector”.
He motioned that the current government could have done better to resolve and built a better economy for the country in previous years but did not, considering where we are today.
“That’s why I keep saying that there were opportunities for us to probably have done better than we did with the economy. Especially looking at where we are today with approximately 15-18% deficit. That is a legacy we’re going into 2021 with”.
Pointing out some mistakes the government can correct in order to prevent this from repeating itself, he said, “The Bank of Ghana and government already described it as using the narrow basis for calculating the deficit instead of the broad basis”.
By: Gyamfuah Owusu-Ackom
