Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta has attributed Ghana’s economic turmoil which has seen the surge in inflation,  depreciation of the Cedi and increased borrowing costs to the novel, COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Finance Minister made this known on Thursday when he provided a brief to Parliament on the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme.

”Mr. Speaker, the current debt restructuring programme is occasioned largely by a series of external shocks that hit the country since 2020 as well as some domestic factors”.

” I recall, as will many of us here, the deep uncertainty and confusion during the early days of the CoVID-19 pandemic. The constant revision of data and scenarios around this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, which had exposed major weaknesses in critical systems in education, health, and the economy around the world. These weaknesses were further exacerbated by heavy disruption in global supply chains” He said.

According to Ken Ofori Atta, ”amid the swirling chaos and darkened economic outlook, it took the timely intervention of President Nana Akufo Addo Government’s major fiscal measures beyond what was programmed in the budget to accommodate the increased expenditure and the shortfalls in revenue”.

He added that ”Government received significant assistance to mitigate the pandemic and its impact on the economy which helped to reduce the fiscal burden.

However, the drastic reduction in revenues coupled with the high expenditure to contain the speed of the pandemic and to protect lives as well as livelihood resulted in a wider deficit of 14.7% of GDP in 2020 and 11.4% in 2021 that needed to be financed”.