Government economic data unquestionable - Assibey disagrees with Bawumia

Senior economist and lecturer at the University of Ghana, Dr. Eric Osei Assibey says there is no questioning the credibility of government data on the economy because previous inconsistencies have been resolved with the IMF team assessing Ghana's need for a bail-out.

“There might have been a problem with the data, but as it stands now IMF has accepted this data to represent the information on the ground”, he told Joy News.

He is the first economist to react to a 70-page economic analysis delivered by New Patriotic Party (NPP)'s 2016 Vice-Presidential aspirant Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia at a lecture at the Central University College yesterday.

The NPP key figure noted that data from the Ghana Statistical Service and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture on the same food items were remarkably different.

“While the MOFA estimated an increase in groundnut price inflation from 7.8% in January to 43.2% by December 2014,GSS on the other hand estimated a decline in groundnut price inflation from 5.9% in January to -2.98% by December 2014”.

Dr. Bawumia told an unusual mix of politicians and academia gathered at CUC that:

“The MOFA estimates appear more consistent with the observations and experiences of people than the GSS estimates. These are prices of the same food items in the same markets across the country. Why should there be such wide differences?”

He concluded that if these anomalies in data persist, the financial medication being prescribed by the IMF will not cure Ghana's economic malady.

“At the end of the day, if the data is not credible, the anchor cannot be credible”, he argued.

Although Dr. Assibey acknowledged that the IMF had also noticed some of these “inconsistencies”, he says after some “back and forth” and “doing a lot of revisions” on the credibility of data the problems were eventually resolved.

Dr. Erice Osei Asibey
He said the negotiations with the IMF were delayed because of these inconsistencies.

He points out that GDP figures have been revised “almost three times already” showing that there have been data credibility problems.

“If you look at the budget that was read in November 2015 [GDP] projection was about 6.9% it was revised to about 7% later it came to 4.5% and finally the GDP growth rate is 4.2%”, he explained.

The International Monetary Fund will be providing nearly $1billion in financial assistance to Ghana following a disturbing trend of fiscal indiscipline over the years.

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline|Edwin Appiah|[email protected]