Ghana’s economic recovery impressive — IMF
Ghana’s economic recovery has been “quite impressive”, with key macroeconomic indicators performing better than the International Monetary Fund (IMF) initially projected, the Fund’s Resident Representative in Ghana, Dr Adrian Alter, has said.
Dr Alter attributed the stronger-than-expected recovery to the government’s policy reforms, supported by favourable external conditions, particularly the surge in gold prices.
Speaking to Bernard Avle on Channel One TV’s The Point of View on Monday, August 24, Dr Alter said Ghana’s economic performance had exceeded expectations under the IMF-supported programme.
“Ghana's recovery has been quite impressive, faster and better than expected. I would say all macroeconomic indicators outperform initial expectations in 2023, and that is quite, quite impressive,” he said.
He said inflation had declined sharply from above 50% to below 5%, while international reserves had also increased significantly, improving the country’s external position.
“On macroeconomic stability, inflation came down quite significantly from more than 50% to now less than 5%. Reserves were rebuilt quite markedly from one month of import coverage to more than four months of import coverage,” he said.
Dr Alter also pointed to the resilience of economic growth, noting that the economy expanded by 6% in real terms in 2025 and recorded growth of 6.4% in the first quarter of 2026.
He said the quality of the growth was particularly encouraging because expansion was being recorded across all major sectors of the economy.
“Growth has been resilient and actually rebounded. We had 6% real growth in 2025. We had 6.4% in the first quarter of this year, and what is important is that growth is now broad-based across all sectors,” he said.
According to him, debt restructuring and structural reforms implemented under the IMF programme had also been instrumental in restoring macroeconomic stability.
“Debt restructuring has been one of the key pillars, and structural reforms. Those helped a lot with macroeconomic stability,” he added.
Dr Alter said Ghana’s stronger-than-anticipated external performance had also been driven largely by higher gold prices, which boosted export earnings and strengthened the current account.
Gold exports, he noted, now account for about 60% of Ghana’s total exports, resulting in increased foreign exchange inflows and faster accumulation of international reserves.
“If you are only talking about the outperformance per se, you can see that gold prices are the ones that were actually much higher than expected. And that basically led to higher exports, particularly gold exports, which are now about 60% of total exports,” he said.
The improved external position, he explained, had strengthened foreign exchange liquidity and allowed Ghana to build its reserves more rapidly than originally anticipated.
Under the IMF programme, Ghana had set a target of achieving three months of import cover by the end of the Extended Credit Facility (ECF). However, Dr Alter said the country had already exceeded that target by the end of 2025.
“Our target, for instance, at the end of the ECF programme was to achieve three months of import coverage. We were at the end of 2025 already at about four months of import coverage,” he said.
He added that favourable terms-of-trade developments had supported the appreciation of the cedi, increased foreign exchange liquidity and contributed to a faster-than-expected decline in public debt.
Dr Alter’s assessment follows the IMF Executive Board’s approval of the final review of Ghana’s US$3 billion Extended Credit Facility programme on July 28.
The approval triggered a final disbursement of approximately US$371 million, bringing total IMF disbursements under the three-year programme to about US$3 billion.
The decision formally concluded the IMF-supported programme, which began in May 2023 following Ghana’s severe economic and financial crisis in 2022.