POLICY BRIEF No. 20 – A REVIEW OF GHANA’S PRESENT FISCAL AND MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE WITH REFERENCE TO THE 2024 MID YEAR FISCAL POLICY REVIEW OF THE GOVERNMENT

Ghana’s recent macroeconomic state has been dire. In the first quarter of 2022, the country suffered a series of international credit-rating downgrades, prompted by sharply deteriorating fiscal outcomes. This shut Ghana out of the international bond market, hitherto a key source of budget and balance-of-payments financing.

Following the loss of bond market access, the balance of payments erupted into crisis. From December 2021 to June 2022, the overall balance of payments position worsened from a US$500 million surplus to a US$2.5 billion deficit, thus indicating a deterioration of US$3.0 billion in just six months. This caused the stock of foreign reserves of the central bank to rapidly decline by US$2 billion from US$9.7 billion to US$7.7 billion in the period.