The Finance Ministry has refuted false and misleading reports that government shared different macroeconomic data with Ghanaians and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In statement issued on Sunday by the Ministry indicated that the first inaccuracy in the said publication was taking the January to September figures, that is the third quarter figures reported in our budget statements and comparing them with the full year figures reported by the IMF.
“The fiscal deficit and primary balance reported in the publication are provisional end-September data quoted from the 2019 and 2020 Budget Statements. It was wrong to compare them with the full year figures reported by the IMF and come to the erroneous conclusion that Government had misrepresented information on the economy,” the Ministry explained.
The data for the first three quarters of 2018 and 2019, the provisional fiscal deficit reported were 3.0 percent of GDP (2019 Budget Statement) and 4.5 percent of GDP (2020 Budget Statement), respectively while the primary balances were 0.5% of GDP (2019 Budget Statement) and -0.3 percent of GDP (2020 Budget Statement) respectively.
“However, the full year fiscal outturn published on the Ministry of Finance website (www.mofep.gov.gh) indicate that the fiscal deficit was 3.9 percent of GDP for full year, 2018 and 4.8 percent of GDP for 2019 (January -December), while the primary balance recorded a surplus of 1.5 percent of GDP and 0.9 percent of GDP in 2018 and 2019 respectively.”
Contrary to the claims in the publication by factcheck-ghana.com of the Media Foundation for West Africa, the Ministry stated that, there is consistency between full-year fiscal performance indicators (overall fiscal balance and primary balance) reported by the Ministry of Finance and that reported by the IMF, even though both of them independently estimate their GDP projections based on independent assumptions.