Ghana to achieve upper-middle-income country status in the next four years if…
Ghana, the second-largest economy in West Africa is likely to achieve an upper-middle-income country status by 2028 if it can maintain a gross domestic product growth rate of 6% with a steady 1.9% population growth rate over the next four years.
This is a projection by Economist and Political Risk Analyst, Dr Theo Acheampong.
In a short missive, Dr. Acheampong noted that Ghana has to do a consistent 7% per annum growth rate to get anywhere close to $5,000 GDP per capita mark.
Currently, Ghana has a GDP per capita of $2,176 with a GDP growth rate of 1.5% and a population growth rate of 2.1% with the country’s nominal population figure being 31.8 million.
In his projections up to 2050, Dr Acheampong asserts that he considered three scenarios; Scenario 1 assumes a 4% annual GDP/GNI growth rate, Scenario 2 assumes a sustained 5% annual growth rate, and Scenario 3 assumes a sustained 6% yearly growth rate.
Scenario 1: At a 4% growth rate, Ghana’s gross national income per capita gets close, but it does not reach the lower end of the World Bank’s Upper Middle Income category of $4,466 GNI per capita. In essence, the country will remain a lower-middle-income country by 2050.
Scenario 2: At a 5% growth rate, Ghana will become an upper-middle-income country by 2043.
Scenario 3: At a 6% growth rate, Ghana will become an upper-middle-income country by 2028.
According to Dr Acheampong, some Chinese Miracle is needed to significantly improve the country’s economic well-being in the next 15 years as Ghana’s GDP needs to grow by 7% to 10% annually to drastically reduce inequality.
