Ghana’s Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Baah Forson said on Tuesday that the West African nation faced significant external debt service costs over the next four years.
“The next four years we’ll be made to call upon to pay $8.7 billion representing 10.9% of GDP, with heavy concentration in the year 2027 and 2028,” Forson told parliament in his first budget speech.
He said that Ghana will have to pay $2.5 billion in 2027 and $2.4 billion in 2028.
“In spite of all these upcoming domestic and external debt service obligations, no buffers were built to cushion this unprecedented debt service burden,” Forson said.
The West African nation is emerging from its deepest economic crisis in a generation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, higher global interest rates, and years of excessive borrowing.
President John Dramani Mahama, who took office in January, has vowed to boost the economy and create jobs. He faces the fallouts of a cost-of-living crisis, an ongoing bailout from the International Monetary Fund, and a sovereign debt default in the cocoa and gold-producing nation.
Reuters/Shakirat Sadiq
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