Ghana’s industrial sector is calling for a dedicated state-backed financing vehicle to channel affordable, long-term credit to manufacturers, warning that the country’s improving macroeconomic numbers have yet to translate into meaningful gains on factory floors or in the livelihoods of ordinary Ghanaians.
The call came at the Chartered Institute of Bankers Ghana’s (CIB Ghana) second Post-Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) Policy Seminar held on Wednesday in Accra, under the theme “Balancing Stability and Growth: Interest Rates Impact in Geopolitical Shocks.” The event brought together regulators, policymakers and private-sector leaders to assess the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) most recent rate decision and chart a course for sustaining recovery.
The BoG’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) reduced the benchmark Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) by 150 basis points to 14 percent on March 18, citing sustained disinflation, improved domestic conditions and elevated real interest rates. Headline inflation has fallen to 3.3 percent in February 2026 from a peak of 23.8 percent in December 2024. Real gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 6 percent in 2025, non-oil GDP expanded by 7.6 percent, and gross international reserves stand at US$14.8 billion, equivalent to 5.8 months of import cover.
Yet for the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), the numbers tell only part of the story.
AGI President Kofi Nsiah-Opoku said that while production costs are easing, consumer purchasing power remains too weak to generate the demand manufacturers need. He argued that commercial banks, constrained by their short-term funding structures, are structurally ill-suited to provide the patient capital that industry requires, and called on government to establish a dedicated industrialisation fund offering long-term, affordable financing to producers. He also cautioned that applying fiscal and monetary tightening simultaneously risks pushing the economy toward stagnation, arguing instead for a deliberate policy mix that privileges production, exports and sustainable employment.
The Finance Ministry’s representative shared the same diagnosis. Dr Theo Acheampong, Technical Advisor to the Minister of Finance, said the central challenge facing policymakers is converting macroeconomic stabilisation into growth that actually reaches people. “We need growth that impacts people’s livelihoods, strengthens productivity and builds domestic capacity,” he said, adding that structural transformation in agriculture and manufacturing is essential to reduce import dependence and build long-term resilience.
He was also direct on employment, saying government cannot absorb the country’s workforce and that the private sector must lead job creation within an enabling policy environment.
From the banking side, Standard Chartered Bank’s Head of Emerging Affluent, Harriet Osei-Mensah Owusu, said appetite to lend has increased but institutions remain cautious, balancing the need to support recovery against the imperative of protecting loan quality. She noted a shift toward closer client monitoring and described trust and ethical conduct as increasingly central to how banks evaluate borrowers.
Ghana Union of Traders’ Associations (GUTA) President Clement Boateng used the seminar to flag a separate concern: the deployment of an artificial intelligence (AI) based system at ports for calculating import duties and taxes. He called for broader stakeholder engagement to review the system before it becomes further embedded, warning that it had created confusion among traders.
CIB Ghana Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Robert Dzato said the institute’s pre-MPC survey showed that 72 percent of senior banking executives expect the macroeconomy to remain stable, and that the sector broadly anticipated and welcomed the rate cut. He said formal recommendations from the seminar, including proposals on industrial financing mechanisms, value chain development and targeted skills export strategies, will be submitted to policymakers.
The BoG Governor, in a statement read by Dr Philip Abradu-Otoo, Director of Research, said lower policy rates must result in improved credit access for businesses of all sizes, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and traders, and that the banking sector must become a resilient driver of long-term economic transformation, not simply a beneficiary of macroeconomic stability.
