The Minority in Parliament is predicting further gloom for the Ghanaian economy following two downgrades in less than a week by two international rating agencies.
According to the Ranking Member on the Finance Committee of Parliament, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, the latest rating by Fitch underscores the fact that the country is insolvent.
Last Friday, S&P Global also downgraded the economy, citing the impact of COVID-19 and the Russian-Ukraine War as the main factors accounting for the poor outlook of the economy.
Dr. Forson told Citi News that: “The Ghanaian economy is simply insolvent. The truth of the matter is that we are bankrupt. Let no one deceive you with semantics. If the Ghanaian economy happened to be a company, we would have declared insolvency. Things are in bad shape. Some of the rating agencies even delayed their announcements.”
“I can assure you that, by the first quarter of next year, Ghana’s credit rating will be D. It is inevitable, not avoidable. This is simply because we are insolvent. We are not in the position to service the debt because as we speak, we are using a chunk of our resources to pay our debt. It’s a basket case, and it’s about time government opens up about it.”
Ghana has recently suffered another blow as its credit rating has been downgraded by Fitch Ratings from B- to CCC.
This rating did not come with an outlook because Fitch typically does not assign outlooks to ratings of ‘CCC+’ or below.
This update follows Standard and Poor’s (S&P) downgrade of Ghana’s foreign and local credit ratings from B-B’ to CCC+C with a negative economic outlook.
Ghana’s January 2022 B- rating from Fitch came with a negative outlook.
