The Covid-19 Pandemic has pushed the country’s deficit and debts to worrying levels according to statistics presented in the 2021 Budget statement read in Parliament on Friday 12th March 2021 by the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu.
He said the current debt stock is 291.6 billion cedis with 76.1% GDP as compared to 2016 where the debt stock was 122 billion cedis and a GDP of 56.9%.
In explaining what accounted for the debt stock, the Majority Leader said the fiscal impact of covid-19 was GHc 19.7 billion, cost of financial sector clean-up was GHc 21 billion while GHc 12 billion was the cost of Excess Capacity charges paid to IPPs.
Without the aforementioned factors, debt stock would be targeting GHc 238.9billion with 58.7 of GDP. The revision of the growth rate is from an average of 7% between 2017-2019 to 0.9% in 2020.
Between 2004 and 2008, Ghana’s debt stock increased by 30% under the Kufuor led NPP Administration. Between 2008-2012 the debt stock jumped to 269% under the Mills NDC administration and 243% between 2012 and 2016 under the Mahama NDC government. Between 2016 to 2020, the country’s debt stock has risen to 137% under the Akufo-Addo administration.
