The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised Ghana’s projected growth rate for the 2023 fiscal year downwards.
The fund in its April 2023 World Economic Outlook Report pegged Ghana’s projected growth rate for the year at 1.6%.
This represents a 1.2 percentage points reduction from an initial rate of 2.8%. This move by the IMF follows a similar action by the World Bank which has also reduced Ghana’s growth rate to 2%.
Justifying this downward revision, the IMF mentioned fiscal slippages as a result of high debt and budget deficit, reducing government spending in infrastructure and investments, as the major reasons.
Despite the reduction in this year’s growth rate, the Bretton Woods Institution however projected a 2.9% growth rate in 2024.
For emerging markets and developing economies, the report said economic prospects are on average stronger than for advanced economies, but these prospects vary more widely across regions.
On average, growth is expected to be 3.9% in 2023 and to rise to 4.2% in 2024.
The forecast for 2023 is modestly lower by 0.1 percentage point than in the January 2023 WEO Update and significantly below the 4.7% forecast of January 2022.
In low-income developing countries, Gross Domestic Product is expected to grow by 5.1%, on average, over 2023–24, but projected per capita income growth averages only 2.8% during 2023–24, below the average for middle-income economies (3.2%) and so below the path needed for standards of living to converge with those in middle-income economies.
