Claim: Member of Parliament for Tamale North constituency Alhassan Suhuyini contends that inflation rates during former finance minister Seth Terkper’s reign were nearly single-digit.
False. Data from the Bank of Ghana, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Ministry of Finance recorded double-digit inflation rates. The member of Parliament for Tamale North constituency Alhassan Suhiyini in the Northern Region of Ghana stated that during the reign of Former Finance Minister Seth Terkper, inflation rates recorded were nearly single digit.
Full Text
The assertion was made from 1 hour 37 minutes, 30 seconds to 1 hour 37 minutes, 46 seconds on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana on Thursday, October 27, 2022. It has generated over 27,000 views on its Facebook page.
According to Mr Suhiyini, “When Seth Terkper was finance minister, what was our inflation rate? It was around a single digit. Today we are talking about 37%.”
He made the assertion when he backed calls for the resignation of finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta. Already, some 80 NPP Members of Parliament on Monday, October 24, 2022, called for his resignation due to the country’s economic difficulties.
Verification
According to the Ghana Statistical Service, Ghana’s current inflation rate stands at 37%. The higher the inflation, the higher the prices of goods and services.
To verify the contention, we first had to establish which years Seth Terkper acted as Finance Minister and the inflation figures during that period.
Mr Terkper was appointed Finance Minister in 2013, shortly after President John Mahama was voted into power in the 2012 elections. He left office in 2017 together with the Mahama-led administration after they lost power in 2016.
DUBAWA looked at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the data from the Bank of Ghana and the Finance Ministry to find out what the inflation figures at the time.
For the IMF, inflation rates from 2013 to 2016 were 11.7%, 15.5%, 17.2%, and 17.5% respectively.
For the World Bank, inflation rates from 2013 to 2016 were 11.7%, 15.5%, 17.1%, and 17.5%, respectively.
On page 10 of the Annual Report of the Bank of Ghana, inflation rates during the reign of the former finance minister were 13.5%, 17.0%, 17.7%, and 15.4%, respectively.
Page 15 of the 2016 Annual Debt Management Report from the Ministry of Finance also quotes the same figures recorded by the Bank of Ghana.
| Year | Annual Inflation Rate | |||
| World Bank | IMF | Ministry of Finance | Bank of Ghana | |
| 2013 | 11.7% | 11.7% | 13.5% | 13.5% |
| 2014 | 15.5% | 15.5% | 17% | 17.0% |
| 2015 | 17.1% | 17.2% | 17.7% | 17.7% |
| 2016 | 17.5% | 17.5% | 15.4% | 15.4% |
Conclusion
From 2013-2016, the period in which Seth Terkper was Finance Minister data from the World Bank, IMF, Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Ghana, suggests that inflation figures rose from 11% to 17% away from the single digit. Therefore to suggest that inflation was around single digit is false.
