Nicholas De-Heer – Institute for Fiscal Studies Ghana

November 19, 2018

The 2018 Fiscal Policy Objectives and Targets: What has changed?

Fiscal Alert 15: The 2018 Fiscal Policy Objectives and Targets: What has changed? Ghana has been facing fiscal difficulties since 2012 and the effects were at the forefront of the fiscal challenges that confronted the NPP government that came into office in 2017. For most of the past six years, large persistent fiscal deficits and a rising debt burden have posed an increasingly serious policy challenge for the country. The implementation of the single spine salary structure for the public sector in 2010, coupled with a sharp rise in energy-subsidy costs and fiscal transfers, rapidly increased public spending. Consequently, the […]

November 15, 2018

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[Occasional Paper 18] Ensuring Strong Broad-Based Economic Growth and Significant Reduction in Unemployment in Ghana Having witnessed a decline in economic growth in the 1990s on average, Ghana recorded increased rates of economic growth in the 2000s. In 2011 and 2012, the economy of Ghana registered exceptionally high growth rates. Even though this was partly due to the production of oil in commercial quantities, which began in December 2012, the traditional non-oil sector also saw very high growth rates in these years. However, starting from 2013, the growth of both the total and non-oil economies began to decline, reaching incredibly […]

November 9, 2018

Press Release: IFS Ghana’s Expectations on the 2019 Budget

Press Release: IFS Ghana’s Expectations on the 2019 Budget The Minister of Finance, Hon Ken Ofori-Atta is expected to present the 2019 National Budget Statement to Parliament next week. In this regard, the IFS Ghana held a press conference on Thursday, November 8, 2018, to present the institution’s expectations of the budget, given the current state of the economy. The press conference was in two parts: The first part covered the main theme of Economic Growth and Unemployment, delivered by Dr. Said Boakye, Senior Fellow, IFS Ghana. Download the presentation here The second part of the press conference covered Revenue and Expenditure […]

October 28, 2018

Strong Economic Growth And Significant Reduction In Unemployment: The Critical Issues To Address In Ghana’s 2019 Budget [Occasional Paper 17]

[Occasional Paper 17] Strong Economic Growth And Significant Reduction In Unemployment: The Critical Issues To Address In Ghana’s 2019 Budget Unemployment has become the most serious challenge currently confronting Ghana. Indeed, the unemployment problem has reached a crisis point, given that the rate consistently increased over the most part of the last three decades, and stood at 11.9% at the end of 2015. The overwhelming majority of the unemployed are young people, aged between 15 and 34 years. Only 10% of graduates find jobs after their national service, and available statistics show that sometimes it takes up to 10 years […]

October 23, 2018

Strong Economic Growth And Significant Reduction In Unemployment: The Critical Issues To Address In Ghana’s 2019 Budget [6]

Policy Brief 6. Strong Economic Growth And Significant Reduction In Unemployment: The Critical Issues To Address In Ghana’s 2019 Budget The Ghanaian economy has maintained virtually its “colonial structure” 60 years after independence as it still depends largely on cocoa, gold, timber and recently oil as the country’s main export commodities. Exported in raw and unprocessed form, these commodities fetch low prices on international markets where Ghana is a price taker, rendering the economy vulnerable to terms-of-trade shocks. The agriculture sector’s contribution to total output has been falling due to declining productivity. The manufacturing base of the economy has also […]

October 16, 2018

An Assessment of the Proposed US$50 Billion Century Bond for Ghana

Fiscal Alert 14: An Assessment of the Proposed US$50 Billion Century Bond for Ghana The Minister of Finance has disclosed that the 2019 Budget will announce the issuing of a US$50 billion century bond that will provide resources to help address major challenges confronting the country, including the cedi depreciation, infrastructural deficit, and low industrial development. A successful century bond will make everybody comfortable about the future of the country’s needs for both infrastructure and foreign exchange so that we have a lot more stability. According to the Minister, the bond will be raised in bits through a shelf offering, […]