Economist, Professor Godfred Bopkin has countered the assertion made by President Akufo-Addo that the consistent downgrades of Ghana’s economy by international credit rating agencies have contributed to the country’s current economic woes.
The President has described such downgrades as “reckless” and are not in the best interests of developing countries like Ghana.
He added that such ratings put undue pressure on African economies.
Stressing the impacts of the ratings, president Akufo-Addo said being “the AU champion for African financial institutions and leader of a country that recently had to deal with one of the most difficult periods in his post-independent history, difficulties that were exacerbated by the reckless behaviour of rating agencies that engaged in pro-cyclical downgrades that shut Ghana out of the capital market and turned a liquidity crisis into a solvency crisis.”
But according to Prof. Bokpin who is also a lecturer in finance, these same rating agencies have equally given a favorable opinion of the country’s economy thus establishing their neutrality.
“In the last year and half, Ghana has suffered a number of downgrades. But I do not agree with the President that, they have been reckless with their ratings because the methodology used is available for everyone to see and even if you vary the methodology you will see that the ratings have been largely fair so it is very difficult to attribute bias because these rating agencies under this same government have in the past given us good ratings for us to go to the capital market to borrow so I am not sure they will change suddenly and become anti-government or reckless”, he told journalists in Accra.
