ghananlpcommunity/ghana-gov-speeches-sentences huggingface dataset:
In comparison, the Financial Stocks Index dropped by 0.12%, a decline that occurred precisely when the market should have been rallying on the government’s supposedly positive economic news.
This timing is no coincidence; it reflects sophisticated investors' assessment that the budget promises of this Government lack credibility and implementation capacity.
When more than half of the auctions in a single year fail, it is not the market that is broken; it is the government's credibility that has collapsed.
Banks and financial institutions, traditionally the backbone of domestic financing, are increasingly reluctant to extend credit to a government that cannot honour its commitments.
This credit crunch cascades through the economy, starving productive sectors of necessary capital and perpetuating the cycle of economic stagnation.
The Expensive and Unsustainable Illusion of Currency Stability Beyond this, the Bank of Ghana's approach to currency management reveals another dimension of the government's short-term thinking.
Under the IMF programme's disciplined framework, foreign exchange interventions were prudently limited to a sustainable level that balanced market support with the preservation of reserves.
During the NPP administration, the IMF restricted the Bank of Ghana from intervening in the forex market heavily.
The intervention budget was fixed at US$80 million per month despite the international foreign reserves exceeding the IMF target.
In fact, by the end of 2024, the reserves stood at almost US$9 billion.
However, with these restrictions removed at the end of the year in 2024, the new Bank of Ghana management and the government when they came into office, started benefiting from the work they knew nothing about; and began to inject massive sums of forex into the market from the reserves that were accumulated before they came into government.
The performance of the cedi is therefore not by any magic or policy intervention.
It is due to the hard work under the NPP administration.
This is the reason the Bank of Ghana did not want Ghanaians to know what they were doing, when the Governor announced that they were not intervening until the minority later confirmed by the IMF exposed the billions of Dollars they had injected into the market.
So far they have injected roughly US$8 billion since January.
Despite these burdensome and costly interventions, which have reduced the cedi's value from approximately GHS14 on 6 th January 2025 when the NPP left government, to almost GHS11 per dollar, the gains remain disappointingly modest and fundamentally unsustainable.
With the significant billions of Dollars of interventions, we expected the rate to be at GHS8 to a Dollar.
The market's muted response reveals a sophisticated understanding that currency strength cannot be purchased; it must be earned through sound economic fundamentals.
Members of the Press, did it not prick your conscience when in touting the government management of the cedi, the Minister used the exchange rate for November 2024 of GHS16 to the dollar to show the unprecedented levels of the appreciation in our local currency, instead of the rate of GHS14 to the dollar on January 6 th , 2025, a day before they assumed office?
This propaganda management of the economy is becoming far too much at best.
Merely repeating an untruth does not make it the truth.
It is important to note that this futile exercise of heavy market interventions have put stress on international reserves, while the core structural weaknesses i.e chronically low productivity, a natural forex surrender by exporters and anaemic export performance, remain completely unaddressed.
Instead, these resources have been squandered on a temporary cosmetic improvement that will inevitably reverse once intervention capacity is exhausted.
We only wish the Governor held a measured long-term view; instead, he appears more interested in grabbing headlines and projecting confidence in an economy that has not undergone any significant structural change under his tenure.
It was therefore not surprising that this week the Bank of Ghana came to face the reality in spite of our earlier warning to them that the heavy interventions were not sustainable and would hurt the economy one day.
The Bank of Ghana has now issued a new framework for the first time prepared with the IMF to guide its market intervention.
For the first time, the Bank has admitted that the appreciation has mainly been due to market intervention.
Additionally, the BOG has conceded that the approach to its market interventions was non-transparent and unsustainable, as it could jeopardise the reserves needed as buffer against international shocks if they continued with the huge interventions they did.
Whilst it promises to continue to intervene to “dampen short-term volatility in the foreign exchange market, responding to disorderly conditions without undermining exchange rate flexibility," at least it wants to do it in a measured and transparent manner.
More importantly, the Bank also concedes publicly for the first time, that it has been relying on the NPP’s Gold Purchase Program introduced by the former Vice President, Dr.
Mahamudu Bawumia, under the government of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo; and is now emphatic that the Gold Purchase Programme will continue to be the anchor of its foreign exchange policy, a fact the NDC and its supporters have denied consistently.
If you have not heard this yet, let me quote the Bank of Ghana from the statement it issued this week.
The “Bank of Ghana will intermediate FX flows in a market-neutral manner, using inflows from sources such as the Gold Purchase Programme, or other export surrender requirements”.
VINDICATION THEY SAY IS IN THE WOMB OF TIME!
BUT ON THE STREETS WE SAY GIVE TIME SOME TIME.
Altogether, the government has chosen the appearance of stability over genuine economic strength.
We saw this reflected in the recent negotiations with organised labour, where the government claimed victory over inflation and celebrated economic stabilisation.
Yet, Ghanaian workers were robbed with another token increase in the base pay by 9% that fails to restore even a fraction of their lost purchasing power.
You recall that the government increased the base pay for public employees for 2025 by 10%, a figure that was below inflation.
Workers were asked to make sacrifices by his Excellency the President, and promised better salaries once things improved.
Workers lost real income as a result of this.
We were expecting that with the much-touted economic achievements announced by the Minister, Ghanaian workers would have been given a decent increase in the base pay for 2026 to enable them recover the real income lost this year.
Sadly, they have been insulted with an even lower increase of 9%.
This is notwithstanding the fact that prices of many basic goods have not moderated.
Is this an admission that a year on, they have still not improved the said conditions?
Or an admission that they have just been deceiving organised labour?
Despite moderating headline inflation, prices of many essential goods and services remain stubbornly elevated, a phenomenon economists refer to as “downward price stickiness”.
The cost of food, utilities, transportation, and basic household necessities continues to consume an ever-larger share of workers' salaries, and alarmingly, there is no long-term plan to address this issue by the ruling Government.
Defining Real Fiscal Discipline: A Blueprint for Genuine Economic Management Ladies and Gentlemen, real fiscal discipline stands in stark contrast to the government's current approach, which involves opportunistic spending cuts and accounting manipulations.
Genuine fiscal responsibility requires a comprehensive framework that balances immediate stability with long-term growth imperatives, and I have some recommendations of what reforms they need to implement: Full and transparent execution of Parliament-approved capital budgets, with quarterly reporting on project milestones and expenditure patterns Comprehensive broadening of the revenue base through progressive taxation and formalisation initiatives, reducing dangerous dependence on volatile short-term financing Strategic lengthening of domestic debt maturities to reduce rollover stress and create space for productive private sector credit Establishment and protection of a minimum capital-expenditure floor explicitly linked to verified project milestones and development outcomes Creation of transparent mechanisms for tracking and reporting on the economic impact of public investments, including job creation and revenue generation These reforms would stabilise the economy on a genuinely sustainable growth path, without masking fundamental liquidity problems as prudent management.
The Inescapable Bottom Line: A Government Trading Tomorrow for Today Members of the press, by systematically under-spending the investment budget that Parliament approved, Ghana has made itself approximately US$469 million poorer in 2025 alone and permanently lost future growth capacity, creating an illusion of fiscal prudence built entirely on postponed progress and abandoned promises.
The government has made a conscious choice to trade tomorrow's economic output for today's accounting optics, creating a growthless, jobless economy that has spectacularly failed to deliver on its core promises of transformation and prosperity.
The current lower levels of inflation has rather imposed enormous strain on the people of Ghana because the government did not address inflation from the supply side.
The demand side approach to inflation has ensured suppressed aggregate demand.
The Bank of Ghana has admitted that as at August 2025, they had withdrawn GHS60 billion from the market to control inflation.
This obviously comes at a cost whilst the withdrawal of liquidity has dried up the pockets of Ghanaians.
Farmers across the nation – from Techiman to Tamale, Ho and many other parts of Ghana - cannot sell their produce as demand evaporates.
Traders from Makola to Kejetia complain people are not buying their goods.
In fact, let me remind traders across the country that this coming Christmas, if you don’t sell to your expectation, know that it is because the NDC government withdrew GHS60 billion from the market just to achieve a single-digit inflation and impoverish you.
You are no more a matter of concern to this government; they have forgotten about you after getting power from you.
That is why their priority has shifted to the use of the recent helicopter accident involving some of our gallant citizens as cover to procure 2 jets, 4 helicopters and 2 offshore patrol vessels.
This is going to cost our country US$1.2 billion.
Government must come clear why the purchase of 2 Executive Jets is a priority at the time it is asking Ghanaian workers to sacrifice more.
As you know, lower aggregate demand derives down economic growth and creates unemployment.
The economy is therefore growing below its potential.
In the second quarter of 2025, the economy grew by 6.3%.
This was less than the 7% growth in the same period in 2024.
The government is praising itself for stabilising the economy, but real economic stability should engender economic growth.
Why is this stability not generating growth is a matter the government must explain.
How is it that when the economy has been stabilized, the government is projecting economic growth for 2026 at 4.8%, far lower than the 5.7% achieved in 2024 when the economy in the words of the Minister was “recklessly” managed?
Another issue copiously covered in the 2026 Budget was the Minister’s assertion that they had brought Ghana from a high debt distress to moderate due to the reduction in the national debt.
What he did not state in the budget were the reasons for achieving this.
With the completion of almost 93% of eligible debts restructured in 2024 including 20 billion of domestic debt, US$13.1 billion in Eurobonds, and US$5.1 billion in bilateral creditors debt, Ghana was on its way to achieve sustainable debt levels.
These debt restructuring successes have further been cited by all the rating agencies – Fitch, S&P and Moody’s as the main reason for the recent upgrades in Ghana’s credit ratings.
This NDC government did not undertake these restructuring work.
They were all achieved under the government of President Nana Akufo-Addo.
The Minister has always found it very difficult to acknowledge this but these cannot be wished away.
The NDC cannot even claim credit for the legislation of the independent fiscal council as well as the law capping public debt to 45% of GDP by 2034, which have been hailed as a mark of fiscal reforms.
The bills on these matters were submitted to Parliament as part of the IMF programme requirement before the end of 2024, but the 8 th Parliament came to an end without considering them.
What this government did was to re-submit the same content as amendment to the Public Financial Management Act, passed by Parliament this year.
The claim for credit for these reforms is not surprising to us.
The NDC government is characteristic of this.
The renegotiation of the power contracts and the Lithium Agreement followed the same pattern of repackaging what the NPP did and turn around to want to take credit for them.
The difference, however, is that, unlike the NPP, the government of the NDC in presenting these renegotiated contracts, seek to shortchange the people of Ghana.
For example, we were to save US$1.5 billion when we renegotiated the power contracts and submitted the revised contracts to Parliament late last year.
They are now celebrating a savings of between US$200 and US$300 million for renegotiating the contracts.
Similarly, in the renegotiated Lithium Agreement, they have reduced the royalty rate from 10% negotiated by the previous NPP government to 5%.
These are two cases of poor negotiations.
Sadly, the loud silence of the Civil Society Organisations which were crying above their voices when the NPP was laying the lithium agreement in parliament with a royalty rate of 10%, make me wonder if we still have independent voices in Ghana.
Not even the attempt to win the sympathy of the Ghanaian people by painting the NPP’s record of the energy sector as a failure can exonerate you.
Your record on the energy sector in Ghana’s history is abysmal.
The term dumsor is your other name and owes its existence to you because of your reckless management of the energy sector.
Ghanaians cannot forget so soon.
The announcement by the Minister that they came to meet US$1.4 billion debt in the energy sector owed to IPPs, only shows the impressive work of the previous NPP government as we inherited US$2.4 billion when we came into office in 2017.
Even the US$1.4 billion the government put out was the result of the many unconscionable power contracts signed by the last NDC government which imposed take-or-pay obligations on our country which could not be accommodated in electricity tariffs as some of the power plants were surplus to our capacity requirement and were most of the time idle, hence the accumulated debts.
Now they want Ghanaians to clap for them for potentially making savings of US$200 million from the renegotiations of the same contracts which exposed us to several billions of dollars in bills.
Minister, do you really deserve our commendation for this?
What remains a mystery for us is the insincerity of this government in the way they treats the people of Ghana.
You remember, the VAT reforms announced in the Budget and seeking to decouple NHIS and GETFUND levies from VAT were first presented in the 2025 Budget, and which according to the Minister was to support businesses as it would remove distortions in VAT administration and lower the rates.
The question we ask is why is this repeated in the 2026 Budget?
Is it simply because the Government didn’t mean it when they put it in the 2025 Budget?
When this government wants to increase taxes, it does it with meteoric speed.
For example, when they wanted to increase the growth and sustainability levy on the mines, they got the bill passed in March.
When they wanted to extend the import levy bill to 2028, they got the bill passed.
When they wanted to increase the energy sector levy on petroleum products by GHS1 per liter of petroleum products, they got the bill passed under a certificate of urgency.
So if it is about raising taxes, there is urgency in passing the bills.
However, when it comes to the VAT reforms to support businesses, the Minister was too busy, as he failed to submit a bill for the amendments 9 months since the Minister announced the reforms.
This government does not believe in its own policy, particularly when it comes to the business community.
We are not surprised because we all know their antecedents – they are not business-friendly even if they change their colours many times.
The Minister in this 2026 Budget Statement, churned out what he thinks are superior fiscal out-turns.
We will wait for the actual fiscal outturn to determine the true fiscal position for 2025 and what methodology he will use for the treatment of arrears.
You recall that in the 2024 fiscal framework which was presented by the Minister in March 2025, the government prepared a shopping list of arrears some dating back to 2022 and used it to manipulate the fiscal outturns.
Events later have vindicated us when we accused him of data manipulation.
Almost GHS18 billion of the arrears they put in the fiscal framework could not be validated by the Auditor General, yet this amount was part of the so-called arrears used in determining the primary balance.
WHAT A DISHONEST GOVERNMENT!
We are expecting the Minister to use the same methodology for determining the primary balances for 2025.
What is worrying is that the IMF looked on whilst the Minister defied the methodology for deriving the primary balance negotiated in the Technical Memorandum of Understanding of the IMF.
It is very sad that the IMF went to sleep.
Members of the press, the state of the economy cannot be good as the Minister wants us to believe.
It is indeed associated with empty pockets and vanishing customers, sophisticated investors actively avoiding government auctions, and ministries struggling to function as they have been starved of the basic resources needed to deliver services.
The path forward demands more than cosmetic adjustments or rhetorical commitments.
Ghana deserves genuine economic leadership, rather than broken promises; real fiscal discipline, rather than opportunistic austerity; and a government that delivers results, rather than excuses.
For us to move forward, we must reject the false narrative that underspending equals prudence.
Proper fiscal discipline means executing approved budgets transparently, and not underspending in productive sectors, but delivering precisely what was promised to the people of Ghana.
In less than a year, the government's policy credibility is already under threat.
The 1-3-3 economy that Ghanaians were sold risks being labelled 4-1-9 if the Government continues its current course.
Not only the 24H Economy, but also the promise to establish a Women Development Bank in 2025 has become another 4-1-9, which has again found space in the 2026 Budget, another attempt to deceive the hardworking Ghanaian women.
Only through credible policies, disciplined implementation, and transparent governance can we restore the confidence necessary to unlock Ghana's tremendous potential and deliver the prosperous future our nation deserves.
The 2026 budget represented a critical test for the government to match its rhetoric with action, but the Government chose to present even more half-baked policy ideas packaged as transformative initiatives.
As a result, we look set to endure another year of fiscal indiscipline, masked as prudence, despite the economic evidence demanding a change in approach.
What we need is economic transformation which Ghanaians were promised, but what we see now is economic stagnation masquerading as progress.
It is economic decline disguised as development, and the 2026 budget does not offer the hope that could take us out this.
As we conclude, we will like to state that the structure of the 2026 Budget does not support the claim of a major shift toward jobs, productivity, and transformation: - Investment levels remain small.
- Revenue projections are overly optimistic.
- Borrowing pressures are high.
- Key fiscal risks are under-discussed.
- Flagship programmes lack transparency and costing.
The lower GDP base and revenue shortfalls mechanically raise the debt-to-GDP ratio, even if the cash deficit narrows.
In effect, Ghana is “consolidating” by shrinking the denominator of its debt ratio.
True debt sustainability requires sustained growth and credible revenue mobilisation, not austerity that undermines both.
Also, hidden financing pressures, have not been duly reflected.
The government has faced several uncovered auctions this year and this is likely to be repeated next year.
The BoG bills remain the attractive because they reflect the true interest rate that the market finds attractive and realistic and this competes with the government’s artificially managed T-bill auctions.
SOE liabilities beyond cocoa and energy that are not fully quantified.
Domestic debt rollover risks, given the short maturities of government securities as well as climate and disaster risks, which are not integrated into the macro-fiscal framework, pose further fiscal risks.
Without addressing these risks, fiscal stability could be short-lived.
Policies without clear budget risks are becoming slogans rather than deliverable programmes.
Ghana needs a Budget that strengthens revenue realism, expands productive investment, protects fiscal credibility, and enables the private sector to lead job creation.
Members of the press, at best, we can therefore describe the 2026 budget, the Galamsey Budget, as Growthless, Jobless and Minimalist Budget.
It contains only cosmetic rhetorics presented by a crawling government.
The people of Ghana must speak up for the government to know that the honeymoon period is over.
Thank you for responding to our call, once again, at such short notice.
Ladies and gentlemen of the press, you will recall that on Friday, August 14, 2020, the last day of the second meeting of the fourth session of the 7th Parliament, President Akufo-Addo caused seven agreements relating to the Minerals Income Investment Fund (“MIIF”) to be laid before Parliament for approval.
The Agreements seek to mortgage Ghana’s future mineral royalties and long term national assets in perpetuity without any regard to its implication on future national revenue streams.
Through this transaction, the Akufo Addo government intends to use a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), Agyapa Royalties, incorporated as an offshore company in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, a known tax haven, in exchange for an upfront amount of ¢500 million, under the Mineral Development Fund Act, 2018 (Act 978) and its amendment Act, which strangely, was yet to be assented to by the President in accordance with article 106 of the 1992 Constitution to make it law.
The Government of Ghana will own 51 per cent of the shares of the company and remaining 49 per cent floated on the London Stock Exchange.
Let me state emphatically, that Members of Parliament had less than 4 hours to scrutinize these agreements, and ascertain the extent to which they would enhance the welfare of the people of Ghana and in particular its ramifications on national revenue into the future.
Paradoxically, the Akufo Addo-government claims to have used two years to prepare these agreements and yet, the people’s representatives in Parliament were required to peruse and approve same in less than four hours.
The NDC Minority in Parliament, took a strong position in the national interest that the indecent haste with which these high-stakes agreements were being rushed through the parliamentary approval process does not augur well for the important exercise of Parliamentary oversight on an issue as critical as the mortgaging of the gold royalties of the country in perpetuity.
As representatives of the people of Ghana, it is our duty to ensure that such agreements meet key legal legal and constitutional requirements before approval.