AFRICA
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, says the country’s inflation rate is better, compared to other West African nations.
The president said this while speaking on the country’s economy recently.
Nana Akufo-Addo said the whole world has been taken aback by the speed with which inflation has eroded people’s incomes.
He said Ghana’s inflation rate has increased by five-fold since 2019, much lower than that of Togo which, accelerated by “sixteen-fold” within the same period.
Akufo-Addo said the rate is also much lower than Senegal’s “eleven-fold” increase as well as the “seven-fold” increase in Cote d’Ivoire.
“Economies, big and small, have experienced, over this year alone, the highest rise in cost of living over a generation; the highest rise in government borrowing in over fifty years; the highest rise in inflation for fourty years; the steepest depreciation in their currencies to the US dollar over the last thirty years; the fastest peak in interest rates for over twenty years; and the greatest threat of unemployment in peace time; with over a hundred million people being pushed into extreme poverty,” Akufo-Addo said.
“Between the end of 2019 and now, inflation in Ghana has increased by five-fold, in Togo by sixteen-fold, by eleven-fold in Senegal, and by seven-fold in Cote d’Ivoire.
“In truth, however, the fact that there are petrol queues in France does not make it more tolerable that the trotro price from Kasoa to Circle has doubled in the past one year, nor does it make it any more tolerable that the price of cooking oil goes up every other week.”
Speaking further, he said it was important to note that mentioning the increases in prices worldwide was not meant to belittle the scope of suffering in Ghana.
Akufo-Addo said it was to help the country put things into “some perspective and, hopefully, learn some useful lessons about how other people are coping”.
Ghana’s inflation hit a high of 37.2 percent in September 2022.
