Nana Osei-Adjei, the Member of Parliament (MP) for New Juaben North and a member of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), has called on the government to build stronger economic buffers as Ghana prepares to exit its International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme in August 2026, warning that global volatility could quickly unravel hard-won gains.
Speaking on the sidelines of the 2026 IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, the lawmaker said the IMF’s upward revision to Ghana’s growth forecast should not encourage complacency, given a fragile external environment shaped by geopolitical tensions and commodity price pressures.
“We should build buffers so that the economy will be resilient in case the global outlook changes,” he said.
The IMF has revised Ghana’s 2026 growth forecast upward to 4.8 percent, reflecting stronger-than-expected performance under the programme, sustained fiscal discipline, and improving macroeconomic conditions. Real gross domestic product (GDP) growth reached six percent in 2025, inflation fell sharply to 3.2 percent by March 2026, and the cedi appreciated by more than 40 percent against the US dollar in 2025.
Osei-Adjei acknowledged those achievements but cautioned that they had been delivered in a relatively stable period. He pointed to lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, when external demand collapsed rapidly and Ghana’s economy came under severe strain, as evidence that shocks can materialise without warning.
“When COVID struck, our economy just came to a standstill and things were very difficult for us,” he said.
He urged policymakers to ensure that reforms implemented under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) programme are sustained beyond its conclusion, warning against any slippage in fiscal discipline once formal external oversight ends. He also stressed that accumulating reserves and managing expenditure tightly would be essential to protecting inflation control and exchange rate stability.
The IMF extended Ghana’s ECF programme by three months to August 2026 to allow completion of the sixth and final review, with the Fund’s Africa Department director describing the extension as purely technical, needed to assess full-year 2025 data and first-quarter 2026 outcomes.
The Fund has cautioned that the post-programme period is precisely when fiscal slippage has historically re-emerged in Ghana.
The Spring Meetings, which ran from April 13 to 18, were dominated by discussions on global uncertainty, debt sustainability in developing countries, and the need for stronger economic resilience against external shocks.
“Managers of the economy should build buffers for the economy to be resilient,” Osei-Adjei said.
