Accra: Professor Godfred Alufar Bokpin, an economist, has called for structural reforms to Ghana's public finances and productive sectors to end the nation's recurring reliance on the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He emphasized that repeated economic disruptions highlighted weaknesses in fiscal management, public investment, institutions, and policy implementation that could not be resolved through fiscal consolidation alone.
According to Ghana News Agency, Prof. Bokpin, a lecturer at the University of Ghana Business School, addressed a public lecture in Accra as part of the 2026 Civil Service Week activities. He stated that Ghana's history with IMF programmes demonstrated that attaining macroeconomic stability alone was insufficient to achieve sustained economic transformation. 'Macroeconomic stability is not the same as economic transformation,' he remarked, underscoring that Ghana had pursued stability for decades without achieving the structural transformation needed for sustainable prosperity.
Prof. Bokpin further noted that repeated engagements with the IMF and World Bank had led to significant external influence on aspects of Ghana's policy design, implementation, and monitoring. While Ghana recently completed its 17th IMF programme, he cautioned against assuming it would be the last, expressing concern about the likelihood of returning to the Fund. He argued for a more resilient economic model, changes in attitudes towards economic management, and consistent implementation of long-term policies to break the cycle of recurring IMF programmes.
Identifying policy inconsistency and weak public-sector institutions as key constraints on economic performance and investor confidence, Prof. Bokpin stressed the need for predictable policies to encourage investment and enable indigenous businesses to compete internationally. He asserted that the challenge lay not in a shortage of resources but in how available resources were deployed, citing inefficiencies in public investment, such as prolonged road projects with inflated costs.
The economist attributed weak domestic revenue mobilisation to the limited expansion of the formal, productive, and taxable sectors of the economy. He noted that a significant portion of economic activity remained outside the formal tax net, restricting the Government's capacity to raise domestic revenue. Prof. Bokpin advised against merely increasing tax rates and urged the Government to foster conditions that enable more businesses and workers to operate formally and generate taxable income.
He called for greater support for indigenous businesses and stronger coordination between fiscal and monetary policy and the real economy as measures to enhance domestic productive capacity, broaden the tax base, and improve economic resilience to future shocks.