Economy to stabilise in 2024-2025 – Ofosu Dorte
Ghana’s economy is anticipated to recover from the current macroeconomic challenges and stabilise by 2024 to 2025 says, Executive Chairman of AB & David Law firm, David Ofosu-Dorte.
Making the statement during a public lecture organised by One Ghana Movement with support from the UPSA Law School titled “The 1992 Constitution: A Fundamental Law for our prosperity or a well-crafted guide for our economic doom” on Thursday, January 5, 2023, the law practioner noted his assertion is premised on evidential historical data indicating that countries such as Ghana usually quickly recover from macroeconomic woes, but unfortunately eventually ends up in the same macroeconomic challenges it exited a few years earlier.
“The history is very clear, anytime you are declared the fastest-growing economy, five to seven years later, you will be back to the IMF. I do not blame the IMF for it. You will notice that it encourages borrowing, and it forces us to walk to the IMF for some discipline,” he stated.
“The economy will recover and will stabilise by 2024 to 2025, but you just watch 2027 to 2029, if we continue what we are doing (borrowing excessively) we will be more broke than we are now,” he remarked, cautioning the government to cut down on its excessive expenditure and invest more in the productive sectors of the economy to avoid another return to the IMF.
Ghana, due to the unsustainability of its debts, has suspended payments to both domestic and external creditors with the country recently undertaking a debt restructuring programme for its creditors.
The country, currently is before the IMF seeking for a $3bn ECF credit facility, a programme that is likely boost investor confidence in the economy and help the country resolve its macroeconomic challenges.
Speaking further at the public lecture, Mr Ofosu-Dorte recommended that the voter ID cards of citizens and mobile money accounts must be converted into bank accounts to help increase the banking population in Ghana.
He said one of the simplest and most convenient ways to increase the tax net is to convert voter IDs and mobile money accounts of people without bank accounts into bank accounts to solve the growing menace.
“If we want to increase the banking population, we could convert voters IDs into bank accounts with zero accounts. It can be done because that is what Mauritius does. Instead of doing that, we have done things that have been detrimental to us,” he opined.
According to him, this would be an easier way to broaden the tax net and get more people to get Tax Identification Numbers to rake in more tax revenue.
Mr Ofosu-Dorte also called for a limit that would hinder the government from implementing more taxes on the ordinary Ghanaian.
