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Sixty-three percent of Ghanaians are of the strong opinion that the economic condition in the country is bad despite the trumpeting of a better Ghana by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government. The respondents, between 18 years and 100 years, perceived the country�s current economy as either �bad� or �very bad�, according to the latest Afrobarometer survey conducted by the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD). The survey, conducted between May and June 2012, sampled over 2,400 respondents from all over the country, with the proportion of views taken almost being equal in both urban and rural Ghana. The results of the findings were released yesterday in Accra. According to Kathleen Addy, outreach coordinator at CDD, the number of people who thought the Ghanaian economy was generally good was only 30 percent; this pales significantly in comparison to those who thought the Ghanaian economy has hit the rocks (63 percent). From 2005 to 2008 (a period when the opposition New Patriotic Party-NPP was at the helms of the economy), the number of people who saw the Ghanaian economy as bad reduced significantly from 64 percent of the population to 45 percent; however, when the ruling NDC assumed power between 2008 and 2012, the number of people who perceived the economy to have deteriorated increased to 63 percent. �It looks as if all the economics we have been taught in the universities is all macro-economy. All we do is inflation; incidentally, our leaders don�t do much. What it means is that we are at the mercy of the international trading regime, so if cocoa is doing well then we are happy. We�ve got to start looking at the micro side of the economy,� stated Franklin Cudjoe, Executive Director of popular think-tank Imani Ghana. According to Ms Addy, majority of Ghanaians (between 52 percent and 77 percent) rated government�s management of the economy, living standards, job creation, income gaps, and inflation �very bad� or �bad�. Between 2002 and 2005, the proportions of Ghanaians who rated government�s management of the macro economy as bad rose from 25 percent to 37 percent. By 2008, the quantum of people who were unhappy with the Ghanaian economy dropped to 29 percent; however, between 2008 and 2012, the figure has risen again as more people (52 percent) said the economy was either very bad or fairly bad. �Ghanaians are very optimistic about the future,� noted the CDD outreach coordinator who stated that about 73 percent of survey respondents said they expected the country�s economic condition to improve in 2013. Of the 2,400 Ghanaians interviewed by the Afrobarometer evaluators, 65% rated government�s efforts on improving living standards very badly. When it comes to the efforts of narrowing income gaps and keeping prices down, the interviewees were even more dissatisfied; between 70 percent and 77 percent of the people rated the government�s management skills on these issues very bad. On the other side, 46% of the interviewed Ghanaians rated the general management of economy very well. This shows that the populace is rather concerned about their private financial circumstances than the economical situation as a whole. Between 2008 and 2012, the proportions of Ghanaians rating government�s performance in managing the macro economy as bad increased by 16% to 23%. Between 2002 and 2012, trends detected by the Afrobarometer showed that in general, the proportion of Ghanaians rating central government�s performance �very or fairly bad� increased every year across these indicators. Indicators such as food security, fighting corruption, providing water/sanitation services, addressing educational needs and reducing crime all registered a negative perception of how government is providing these needs. The Afrobarometer, which draws its source of funding from several international aid agencies, is an independent comparative series of public opinion surveys that measure public attitudes toward democracy, governance, the economy, leadership, identity, and other related issues across Africa. In Ghana, CDD has been tasked as the agency responsible for carrying out these periodic surveys since 1999.