By Kodjo Adams
Accra, Aug. 11, GNA – Professor Godfred Alufar Bokpin, an economist, has called for structural reforms to Ghana’s public finances and productive sectors to end recurring reliance on the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
He said repeated economic disruptions reflected weaknesses in fiscal management, public investment, institutions and policy implementation that could not be resolved through fiscal consolidation alone.
“Ghana has had to move beyond traditional measures such as expenditure controls and revenue enhancement and resort to debt restructuring because recurring economic disruptions have imposed enormous costs on the economy,” he said at a public lecture in Accra as part of activities marking the 2026 Civil Service Week.
Prof. Bokpin, a lecturer at the University of Ghana Business School, said Ghana’s history of IMF programmes showed that achieving macroeconomic stability alone was insufficient to deliver sustained economic transformation.
“Macroeconomic stability is not the same as economic transformation,” he said, stressing that Ghana had spent decades pursuing stability without achieving the structural transformation required to create sustainable prosperity.
Prof. Bokpin said repeated engagement with the IMF and World Bank had also resulted in significant external influence on aspects of Ghana’s policy design, implementation and monitoring.
He noted that Ghana had recently completed its 17th IMF programme, but cautioned against assuming that it would be the last.
“I am more comfortable this morning using the word ‘when’,” he said, referring to the possibility of Ghana returning to the Fund.
Prof. Bokpin said Ghana needed a more resilient economic model, changes in attitudes towards economic management and consistent implementation of long-term policies to break the cycle of recurring IMF programmes.
He identified policy inconsistency and weak public-sector institutions as key constraints on economic performance and investor confidence.
Prof. Bokpin said predictable policies were necessary to encourage investment and enable indigenous businesses to develop the capacity to compete in international markets.
He said the country’s challenge was not simply a shortage of resources, but how available resources were deployed.
Prof. Bokpin said borrowing could support development when borrowed funds were invested in projects capable of generating sufficient economic returns to service the resulting debt.
He questioned the economic value of projects that took many years to complete, particularly where significant cost increases occurred before the projects began generating benefits.
Prof. Bokpin cited road projects that had taken more than a decade to complete and whose final costs were several times their original budgets as examples of inefficiencies in public investment.
He said weak domestic revenue mobilisation was partly linked to the limited expansion of the formal, productive and taxable sectors of the economy.
The economist noted that a significant portion of economic activity remained outside the formal tax net, limiting the Government’s capacity to raise domestic revenue.
He said increasing tax rates alone would not resolve the revenue challenge, and urged the Government to create conditions that enabled more businesses and workers to operate formally and generate taxable income.
Prof. Bokpin called for greater support for indigenous businesses and stronger coordination between fiscal and monetary policy and the real economy.
He said such measures would help strengthen domestic productive capacity, broaden the tax base and improve the resilience of the economy to future shocks.
GNA
Edited by Kenneth Sackey
Reporter: Kodjo Adams