Finance Minister, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam, has predicted that Ghana’s inflation rate will hit 15% by the end of 2024.
Current figures from the Ghana Statistical Service(GSS) indicate that inflation for June 2024 recorded a slight dip to 22.8%.
This represents a decline of 0.3 percentage points from May, which was 23.1%.
At a town hall meeting in Accra on August 6, Dr. Amin Adam praised the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia administration for its efforts to manage inflation despite economic challenges.
He highlighted that since taking office in 2017, the current government has significantly reduced inflation rates.
Dr. Amin compared the present situation to the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration, which saw inflation rates of 17.7% in 2015 and 15.4% in 2016.
Under the NPP government, the minister said that inflation dropped to 9.4% in 2018 and 7.9% in 2019, achieving single-digit inflation for two consecutive years.
However, he noted that the global inflation surge triggered by the Russian-Ukraine war caused Ghana’s inflation rate to spike to 54% in 2022.
Despite this, the government has managed to reduce it to 22% as of June this year, a significant drop of over 50% in just 17 months.
Dr. Amin is committed to bringing inflation down to 15% by the end of this year and aims to achieve single-digit inflation next year if the NPP remains in power.
“Inflation, the rate of inflation, headline inflation in 2015 was 17.7 per cent. In 2016, it came to 15.4 per cent. In 2017 when we took government, inflation came down further to 11.7 percent. A year later, in 2018, it became single-digit inflation at 9.4 percent. In 2019, we had a single digit of 7.9 per cent.”
“Two consecutive years, the longest period a government has recorded a single-digit inflation. We have had single-digit inflation in the past, but for two consecutive years, 24 months of single-digit inflation was historic. Now when the Russian-Ukraine war started, again as I said, we saw global inflation growing and ours was also negatively affected. In fact, inflation went up to 54 per cent in 2022.”
“But again see the efforts we have put in managing inflation in Ghana. In June this year, 17 to 18 months, we have brought inflation down to 22 per cent. In 17 months, we have more than half inflation from 54 per cent to 22 per cent and we are determined to end this year with an inflation rate of 15%.
“If this party continues in government next year, we are determined to bring inflation down to single-digit inflation next year,” he stated.