Ghana’s headline indicators may be looking good — inflation has been tamed from the 22–23% range and the exchange rate has come down — but the MP for Kade Alexander Agyare,says the citizens deserve to know how that stability was achieved, and what it is costing the productive economy.
“This is one thing we need to put on record: it didn’t just come down,” he said while contributing discussions on the Keypoints programme on TV3 days after the 2027 budget statement was presented in Parliament by the Minister for Finance, Cassiel Ato Forson.
The cedi, he explained, had slid from around GH¢14 to as much as GH¢17 before the Bank of Ghana moved aggressively into the foreign exchange market, injecting as much as $1.5 billion to pull the rate back to around GH¢14.5–14.7.
In the past, he noted, interventions of roughly $60 million a month were enough to hold the rate at about GH¢14.2. Now the scale is in a different league entirely.
“When you do this and you get it low, it is money that could have been used in other sectors of the economy that is being used to hold the exchange rate this low,” he cautioned.
The MP argued that beyond the paper numbers, what Ghanaians are really watching is their own micro-businesses — and on that front, 2026 was a disappointment.
Credit to the private sector grew by just 8% — a ratio of about 12.9% — which he described as the lowest in the sub-region, where comparable countries record 30–36%. “So yes, we are trying our best, but we are still nowhere,” he said.
He then turned to the 2027 Budget, pointing to a provision of about GH¢16 billion in borrowing from the domestic, commercial market.
“This is the same government that says it wants to empower the private sector — and then you don’t have enough credit for them, and you will be going to the market to compete with them,” he said. “And every time government goes to the market, what happens? Interest rates go up.”
Government’s stated intention, echoing what the Finance Minister has been saying, is to work in partnership with the private sector and give them incentives, he noted — “but how are you giving it to them? Just give them the financial space.”
He recalled that somewhere around the middle of 2026, the Finance Minister spoke of a 15% interest rate. The private sector, however, never benefited.
“You don’t talk about a low interest rate when businessmen and women walk to the banks and the money is not there. They were not getting it, so they don’t get to grow.”
And when businesses don’t grow, he reasoned, productivity falls — and that hits employment.
“If you are looking at growth and job creation in 2027,” he warned, “government needs to go back and reconsider its decision to go to the commercial market with the private sector in the same year.”
“It will not help the government,” he concluded.