A banking consultant is raising questions about Ghana’s celebrated economic recovery and his answers suggest the problem runs deeper than most policymakers are willing to admit.
Speaking on Citi FM, Dr. Richmond Attuahene argued that the disconnect between Ghana’s improving macroeconomic indicators and daily hardships is neither accidental nor temporary.
Ghana’s economic recovery is structural and without deliberate intervention. It will persist regardless of what the figures say. “There is a complete disconnect between the good figures of inflation, the cedi stability and trade surpluses,” he said.
Ghana’s headline inflation has fallen dramatically from a peak of 54% in 2022 to approximately 3.3% as at today. Dr. Attuahene does not dispute those figures but the conclusions being made from them.
Falling inflation does not mean falling prices. It means prices are rising more slowly from an already elevated base.
Goods that became expensive during the crisis period have not become cheap again. Meanwhile, wages, particularly in the informal sector, never kept pace with the original surge.
A worker who received a 10% salary increment while inflation ran at 54%, absorbed a devastating real income loss that has not been recovered.
“There’s a lag, a delayed effect, the way prices went up, they don’t really come down,” he said.
This, according to him, explains why Ghanaians who look around their kitchens feel no relief, though inflation is at 3.3%.
Infrastructure: The Silent Tax on Every Transaction
Beyond the lag lies a deeper problem, one that statistics are poorly equipped to capture. A consignment of tomatoes from Akumadan or Afrancho that once reached Accra in five hours now takes more than ten hours.
Poor roads mean longer journeys, higher fuel costs and significant produce spoilage before goods reach the market. That inefficiency is not absorbed, it is passed on, embedded in every price Ghanaians pay.
Dr. Attuahene described witnessing a load of plantain rotting away near Goaso, not for lack of buyers, but because the supply chain could not move it in time.
He recalled travelling from Kumasi to Accra by overnight train in the early 1970s. That infrastructure is gone. In its absence, road haulage, expensive and unreliable, fills the gap and food prices reflect it.
“Even if you get inflation at zero, by the time you bring the produce to Accra, the transport and wastage alone can affect prices,” he said.
The Cedi Stability Illusion
The cedi’s stabilisation has been politically prominent. Dr. Attuahene accepts the achievement but challenges the conclusion drawn from it.
A stable cedi benefits importers directly. Their landed costs have eased. But the savings are not being passed to consumers, he noted. Importers, he argued, are absorbing the windfall.
Meanwhile, a stable or appreciating cedi penalises exporters, whose local-currency revenues shrink, as the exchange rate becomes firm. The incentive to produce for export weakens. The incentive to import and sell locally strengthens.
“The importers are clapping, the exporters are crying,” he said, adding “That is how the equation is.”
Commercial lending rates remain stubbornly elevated among the highest in West Africa, even as inflation has normalised.
Entrepreneurs who might otherwise expand operations and hire workers are priced out of the credit market before they begin. The macroeconomic conditions for growth exist on paper. The financial conditions for businesses to act on them largely do not.
And looming over all of it is 2027, when Ghana faces its first significant external debt repayment under its IMF restructuring arrangements, estimated at approximately $2.7 billion in foreign currency obligations.
“2027 is a make or break for Ghana, if we are able to do it without any encumbrances, then we can say we have a resilient economy,” he said.
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