The Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Benjamin Boakye, has expressed concerns over the state of the country’s energy sector. According to him, the country currently relies on approximately 150 megawatts, leading to ongoing load shedding across major cities, commonly referred to as Dumsor. The power sector is not as robust as we need it to be, and therefore we face these kinds of challenges. We currently have a deficit, which is not as significant as it was a couple of months ago; we now have about 150 megawatts of load to share,” he said while discussing the frequent power outages in the country on Monday, November 4, 2024, with Kojo Yankson on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show. Boakye added that low voltages and total power outages sometimes occur due to the energy sector’s inability to manage the situation effectively. The reality is that the system also has a deficit that needs to be managed, and from our [ACEP] tracking, the power providers are moving it
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IES) has alluded that Ghana’s economy is generally growing below its potential due to several factors. This includes low public investments, macroeconomic instability and the high cost of doing business. In its latest bi-monthly Economic Outlook, the IEA said achieving higher growth will require, in particular, leveraging the country’s huge natural resource wealth to increase investments in physical and human capital, lowering the cost of doing business and sustaining macroeconomic stability. Data published by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) showed that economic growth was generally on the upward trend between the second quarter of 2023 and the second quarter of 2024, with year-on-year Gross Domestic Product growth increasing from 2.5% to 6.9%. Non-oil GDP growth followed a similar trend as overall GDP growth during the period, increasing from 3.1% to 7.0%. In terms of sectoral growth, agriculture showed a fairly steady positive growth throughout