The Director of Legal Affairs of the United Party, Andrew Appiah-Danquah, has questioned whether Ghana’s improving macroeconomic indicators are translating into meaningful economic opportunities, warning that the country’s longstanding structural weaknesses could undermine the benefits of the recovery.
He argues that falling inflation, stronger economic growth and relative stability of the cedi, although important, cannot constitute economic transformation if the country continues to struggle with job creation, industrial development and revenue mobilisation.
Speaking to Sena Nombo on Radio Gold during discussions ahead of the presentation of the 2027 Budget, Mr Appiah-Danquah described Ghana’s economic structure as fundamentally flawed, maintaining that successive governments have concentrated on managing economic indicators without sufficiently transforming the productive foundations of the economy.
He likened macroeconomic indicators to medical test results, explaining that figures such as inflation and GDP growth provide useful information about the state of an economy but do not necessarily reflect the living conditions of ordinary citizens.
According to him, the central challenge is translating economic stability into employment, wealth creation and sustained improvements in living standards.
Mr Appiah-Danquah identified Ghana’s dependence on the extraction and export of raw natural resources as a major structural weakness, arguing that the economy has failed to develop sufficient manufacturing capacity to generate employment and retain greater value from its resources.
He questioned the contribution of manufacturing to Ghana’s reported economic growth, insisting that the composition of that growth matters as much as the headline figures.
He further argued that a genuinely productive economy should naturally create opportunities for businesses to expand, generate sustainable employment and enable more citizens to build wealth through legitimate economic activity.
Revenue mobilisation was another major concern raised by the United Party official. He claimed that only about 70,000 businesses in Ghana pay taxes, citing the figure as evidence of what he considered a narrow revenue base.
Mr Appiah-Danquah also questioned the sustainability of the cedi’s relative stability, suggesting that interventions involving the Ghana Gold Board had played an important role in supporting the currency.
He maintained that Ghana needed to pursue deeper economic transformation rather than rely on short-term improvements in macroeconomic performance.
His comments place employment creation, industrialisation, domestic revenue mobilisation and the sustainability of economic growth at the centre of the debate surrounding the 2027 Budget.
