Energy experts are worried the rising oil prices will impact negatively on consumers, though the country will benefit significantly from the windfall of the commodity price. Brent crude crossed the $100 mark on 24th February 2022, selling at $105 per barrel on the world market, far more than the $65 dollars budgeted by the government in the 2022 Budget. It has since fallen marginally, hovering around $100 per barrel.

The World Bank has commended Ghana for considerable progress in economic and social progress in the past 30 years, saying, it achieved middle-income status in 2011 because of strong, sustained economic growth, averaging over 5% since the early 1990s. This is coming after the World Bank Group today discussed a new 5-year Country Partnership Framework for Ghana.

Ghana has been ranked as an underperforming economy among four nations in sub-Saharan Africa including South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. According to a survey undertaken by Senior Lecturer at the Economics Department of the University of Ghana.

Interest rates continue to surge on the domestic market as challenges within the fiscal economy lingers on. According to the auctioning results of the weekly Treasury bills by the Bank of Ghana, interest rates of the short term financial instruments went up marginally by 0.03% on the 91-day and 182-day T-Bills.

Banks operating in Ghana wrote off ¢2.086 billion as bad debt in 2021, a 4.7% decline over the previous year, the Domestic Money Bank’s Income Statement by the Bank of Ghana has revealed. In 2020, the provision for bad debt was ¢2.183 billion.

More than 90% of businesses that shutdown as a result of the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic have resumed full scale operations. This constitutes more than 20,000 businesses, out of the over 30,000 that were closed down during the pandemic.

The global oil market will be subject to significant uncertainties in 2022, due to the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on economic growth, oil demand, and the production decisions of oil producing countries.

The Deputy Transport Minister, Hassan Tampuli, has refuted claims that the former Managing Director of Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL), Yaw Kwakwa, was dismissed due to strife with McDan Aviation.

The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has said the government should “immediately” apply the estimated accumulated balance of GH¢948 million in the Price Stabilization and Recovery Levy (PSRL) account to cushion petroleum consumers instead of waiting for parliament, which is currently on recess, to grant a two-month suspension of the PSRL “when there is accumulated cash to assuage the suffering of the consumers immediately”.

The government secured a little above ¢1.08 billion from the sale of a 2-year bond issued on 10th February 2022. This came a few days after credit rating agency, Moody’s downgraded Ghana’s creditworthiness into junk status.