After April 2026, what’s the plan? Prof Bokpin says uncertainty is the real risk
- Don’t celebrate yet—Prof Bokpin says Ghana’s post-IMF danger zone is always in 2–3 years out
Ghana risks sliding back into macroeconomic stress within two-and-a-half to three years after exiting its IMF program unless it sets out a clear post-program framework and rebuilds buffers, Prof. Godfred A. Bokpin, a financial economist from the University of Ghana Business School, warned at Ghana’s Economic Outlook 2026 Business Forum, organised by the German Embassy in Accra. He said the current programme may technically end in April 2026, but reviews and reporting could run into July/August, leaving businesses planning for 2026 without clarity on the fiscal and policy anchors that will replace IMF discipline.
“Since independence,” he argued, Ghana has been “susceptible…to almost all these shocks, especially commodity shocks,” and the pattern is not theoretical. He pointed to the speed with which external buffers can disappear from a positive reserve position soon after independence to a negative one less than a decade later as an early warning that commodity swings can overwhelm policy ambition, no matter how well-intended the spending plans appear.
That history matters now because Ghana’s current stabilisation narrative is being built during a commodity upswing precisely the moment, Prof Bokpin suggested, when discipline should be hardest, not easiest. He asserted that shocks are inevitable, prompting the question of whether current policies are enhancing resilience or merely concealing vulnerabilities.
His first warning was about clarity. He said the government has told the market it will “exit the IMF program successfully,” yet businesses still do not know what comes next. He expected the 2026 budget to signal a post-programme direction, especially because there were indications of a “three-month technical extension” to complete structural reforms and benchmarks. The practical consequence is that, even if the programme technically ends in April 2026, the “reporting and review” could extend into July or August, leaving firms trying to plan investment, inventories, pricing, and hiring without a clear macro anchor.
For Prof Bokpin, this is not a minor communications gap; it is a macro risk. “That uncertainty is not good for planning,” he said, pressing for clarity on whether Ghana will seek another IMF-type arrangement. He cited the possibility of another ECF or “policy support instrument,” or pursuing a homegrown framework with credible targets. Without that signal, he warned, Ghana risks repeating a pattern where optimism at the moment of exit gives way to stress shortly after: “We tend to suffer a relapse, a maximum of two and a half years or three years after exiting an IMF program,” either from external commodity shocks or internal pressures linked to elections.
The second warning was about how Ghana is using the upswing. Prof Bokpin said a shock-prone economy should be “moderate” in deploying windfalls and should adopt a trade-off approach that prioritises building reserves rather than heavy market intervention to strengthen the currency. He pointed to the scale of foreign exchange injection he believes has occurred, “over $10 billion” in 2025 alone, and said the resulting “very strong cedi” raises sustainability concerns.
His reservations were not ideological. They were about arithmetic for an open economy. Prof. Bokpin argued that for a small, import-dependent country, a currency that appreciates by more than 40 per cent in a single year carries consequences for exporters and for the durability of the recovery narrative itself. In his telling, this is no longer an abstract risk: he said he can “understand the challenges in the cocoa sector right now” given exchange rates that convert export earnings into cedis at levels that can push exporters into losses, especially when margins are “very tight”.
Behind that point sits a broader structural vulnerability: Prof. Bokpin noted that “more than 70% of our export earnings are still driven by primary commodities,” a concentration that leaves Ghana exposed when the global environment turns, and he specifically flagged global uncertainty associated with “the rise of nationalism and regionalism.” The point is straightforward: if export earnings remain commodity-led and policy choices erode exporter competitiveness, the resilience story may be thinner than headline indicators suggest.
He also challenged the temptation to treat signature domestic initiatives as a substitute for a post-IMF macro framework. In a pointed line, he said the “24-hour policy and accelerated export programme are not programmes to substitute for an IMF programme,” insisting that the government must “assure the market by coming out with its own homegrown programme.” He added that the current administration, under the leadership of President John Mahama of the NDC, has a track record of developing homegrown policy frameworks, citing the consensus that underpins the IMF program, which began in April 2015.
Finally, Prof. Bokpin returned to buffers and stated that Ghana has “not built sufficient reserves”, describing an economy “worth over $100 billion” with reserves “around 13 billion or so” as inadequate for withstanding shocks that “will happen”. The question, then, is not whether Ghana can engineer a strong currency or a calm quarter. It is whether it can build enough cushion to survive the next external hit and resist the internal impulses that historically convert exits into relapses.
