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Mensah Thompson, Executive Director of pro-National Democratic Congress, NDC, think tank, the Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability, ASEPA, has accused the government of economic mismanagement.

He mentioned specifically the role of Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, in what he says are instances of misreporting of economic data and cooking of figures.

Contributing to a discussion on Al Jazeera’s ‘The Stream’ programme which discussed the state of the Ghanaian economy and the return to the International Monetary Fund, IMF; Thompson stressed that Ofori-Atta's actions ultimately forced Ghana to return to the IMF.

He cited how Ofori-Atta had stressed that Ghana was not going to the IMF putting it down to fears of having to open the books to outsiders, “I mean, part of that really is about the bad financial reporting that has been seen under this current Finance Minister.

“He has been cooking his financial figures, he has been misreporting Ghana’s economic data to the international market and other people just to create the impression that we are doing well when actually our economy was sinking.

“That is why it was too late for a lot of people to see and for a lot of intervention coming late because some of these data that have been manipulated could be found out by the international players,” he stressed.

Ghana on July 1 announced it was approaching the Washington-based outfit for a rescue programme.

An IMF team has since had initial contact with major stakeholders during a one-week visit to Accra between July 6 – 13, 2022.