Ghana: Citizens React as Economic Hardship Worsens

Anti-government protest recently rocked Ghana’s capital, Accra, as Ghanaians protest against economic hardships, perceived corruption, and misplaced priorities.

However, the two-day protest, organised by Arise Ghana, descended into violence with police using tear gas and firing warning shots to disperse demonstrators some of whom also threw stones at the security agents.

Arise Ghana describes itself as a group comprising civil society actors, political party leaders, media practitioners, and trade union members.

Protestors, clad in red and black attire, held placards with inscriptions such as ‘Songhor salt stolen forever; Russia-Ukraine war has nothing to do with the hikes, reduce fuel prices now!; We won’t allow you to rob our future with this Agyapa deal; Job opportunities for all-scam; Repeal the obnoxious E-levy Act now’.

Among the demands of the demonstrators were the ‘call for the immediate withdrawal of the E-Levy act, the scrapping of the Borla tax and the numerous taxes on fuel’.

They called on government to address the rate of unemployment in the country, tackle inflation, and address the issue of the salt miners at Songhor and with immediate effect arrest the falling cedi.

Meanwhile, the General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) in Ghana, Yaw Baah, has advised the Ghanaian government against collecting a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Baah rather called on the government to engage social partners and stakeholders to come out with innovative home-grown solutions to the problems facing Ghana.

The TUC boss, who was speaking at the third biannual council meeting of the union, noted that the socio-economic ramifications of an IMF programme would pose more dire challenges for the West African country.

According to Baah, one of the challenges hampering private sector growth and consumption of households was high interest rate, stressing that businesses had to borrow at interest rates above 20 percent which does not make them competitive.

‘We are at a stage where if you want to force inflation down at a rapid rate, the effect or cost is lack of jobs’, Ghanaian Times quoted him as saying.

‘Hiking of policy rate thwarts the expansion of businesses and the way we pay for this is that our young people cannot get jobs. That is why we need a balance between inflation and interest rate.

‘Low cost of capital is what businesses need to be able to expand. Therefore, if you increase interest rates, first you are saying that you are not going to allow businesses to borrow much so they can expand, and if businesses do not expand, it means we cannot create more jobs’.

According to the IMF April 2022 Fiscal Monitor report, Ghana’s debt to GDP ratio was 84.6 percent. Ghana’s inflation rate had also reached 23.6 percent in April 2022.

Photo source: Nipah Dennis/AFP

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