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World Bank is Right; Ghana’s 2022 Economic Crisis Was Homegrown – Prof. Bokpin
September 27, 2025
A Professor of Finance at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS), Prof. Godfred Bokpin, has backed the World Bank’s position that Ghana’s 2022 economic collapse was largely self-inflicted, insisting that the COVID-19 pandemic only exposed deep-rooted structural weaknesses.
Speaking on Friday observed by vistanewsgh.com, Prof. Bokpin described the economic downturn as “an accident waiting to happen,” citing years of fiscal mismanagement and lack of debt transparency.
“The World Bank is right. This is a settled matter. COVID only fast-tracked it. It was an accident waiting to happen. COVID-19 magnified the existing vulnerability, and the Russia-Ukraine war was more or less like the icing on the cake,” he said.
According to Prof. Bokpin, Ghana’s real crisis began in the third quarter of 2021 when the country lost access to international capital markets after investors detected cracks in the economy.
He noted that even as far back as 2019, government’s own debt sustainability analysis showed that nearly all indicators had been breached, but authorities continued to mask the problem by treating large debts as “off-balance sheet,” particularly those incurred by state-owned enterprises such as Cocobod.
“Remember, the biggest issue at that time was about debt accountability and transparency. We were creating the impression that our debt was sustainable, but that wasn’t the case,” he stressed.
Prof. Bokpin further revealed that once external borrowing avenues were shut, the government turned to the Bank of Ghana for financing, leading to massive money printing.
“The exposure of the government to the Bank of Ghana in terms of overdraft and related arrangements came to about GH¢77.6 billion, which had to be restructured,” he disclosed, adding that the central bank alone printed over GH¢40 billion to support the state.
By the time the International Monetary Fund (IMF) intervened, Ghana’s debt-to-GDP ratio in present value terms had hit 109 percent, while debt service-to-revenue ratios, which should have remained below 18 percent, had ballooned to between 22 and 25 percent.
The finance professor argued that even before COVID-19 struck, Ghana’s fiscal vulnerabilities were already evident, but international borrowing had temporarily concealed them.
“Once we lost market access, we became exposed, not only internationally but domestically. We were priced out in terms of medium- to long-term bonds and had to rely solely on Treasury bills,” he explained.
Prof. Bokpin concluded that Ghana’s economic collapse was the inevitable result of weak debt management, fiscal indiscipline, and poor accountability.
“It is not necessarily COVID that exposed us. We had created this, and it was just a matter of time,” he emphasised.
