Banking consultant Dr. Richmond Atuahene has emphasized the need for bold and pragmatic leadership to steer Ghana through its current economic difficulties.
He pointed to the severe consequences of the domestic debt exchange program, estimating that it resulted in losses exceeding $61.7 billion for stakeholders, including banks, pensioners, and individual investors.
Dr. Atuahene also criticised global trade practices, including proposed U.S. tariffs, for worsening economic strain, and called on African leaders to confront the continent’s deepening poverty and growing reliance on external institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank.
“Ghana has gone through a series of economic disruptions, with the financial crisis in 2018, and then we have the economic downturn of 2022. And the last straw, which caused much harm, was the DDEP. The cost was 61.7 billion,”
“What has become so astonishing as the dust is settling is the 10 percent tariff the US has imposed on imports, thus making imports expensive and, at the same time, making exports noncompetitive. And in all these spheres, a nation must go on. The wind that we need to come out of it. But before, we need pragmatic and bold leadership that is the first in this part of Africa.”
