Out of HIPC, into HIPC, Out of HIPC. Critical News, 12th October 2014

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

What a crazy week. And next week threatens to be even better. Is this good crazy or strange crazy? Can crazy get better or does it just mesmerize because we don’t understand the implications of future crazy?

A Deputy Director of Fiscal Affairs Department at the IMF, Sanjeev Gupta countered a Government statistic and declared us HIPC in one single response to a questioner and for a few brief days until the IMF chickened out and did some damage control we were back to HIPC, with a debt to GDP ratio pitched at 71%. Government had calculated its figure at 55%.

Now the program sensitive bureaucrats at the IMF have placed the figure at 56% and rephrased Gupta’s glib remark as their estimate for the end of 2015. Read the detail from here. (http://www.citifmonline.com/2014/10/11/imf-exonerates-govt-over-debt-to-gdp-controversy/)

This controversy has mega spine implications for the people at the IMF. Without providing numbers to show how he arrived at his 71% ratio, which I will try and justify or refute later in this article, I kind of accepted the figure, based on available statistics and the state of events in the country.

I do however think it is time to get clear reference points when we place these numbers in the public domain, especially when they can be alarming and even cataclysmic.

But as an aside, I wonder if Gupta will be sent to another division.

Unfaithful in Democracy and Politics. Critical News, 31st August 2014

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

Little known events shape your life in diverse ways and I discovered some deeply centered emotional nemesis within me I never knew I harbored. All the way from the seventies.

For five years in my life I worked as a laboratory assistant at the Veterinary Services in Labadi. Formative years when I was on the path to becoming a doctor; a profession I later abandoned as I bogged down with teenage matters and sports, my attention drawn from loftier existentialist matters to simple animal behavior.

I remember distinctly the day my half-Alsatian puppy was run over and I had the first test to put it down and alleviate the pain of suffering from two broken front legs and a partially crushed head.

For hours I struggled with the decision, not realizing I was prolonging the pain because I was vacillating and did not have the courage to let a faithful and dedicated pet pass on peacefully.

I had watched many movies of similar situations and never thought I would not have the courage.

Lady had been with me since she was a puppy and followed me dedicatedly everywhere, at some point constantly outside my bedroom door waiting for morning treats and a new exciting catapult day, when she would run around with me in Kanda Estates picking up birds, agama lizards, anything but toads, which she found out one day were a bitter taste and unworthy of such single-minded devastation from my catapult.

Unfaithful in Democracy and Politics. Critical News, 31st August 2014

Sydney Casely-Hayford, sydney@bizghana.com

Little known events shape your life in diverse ways and I discovered some deeply centered emotional nemesis within me I never knew I harbored. All the way from the seventies.

For five years in my life I worked as a laboratory assistant at the Veterinary Services in Labadi. Formative years when I was on the path to becoming a doctor; a profession I later abandoned as I bogged down with teenage matters and sports, my attention drawn from loftier existentialist matters to simple animal behavior.

I remember distinctly the day my half-Alsatian puppy was run over and I had the first test to put it down and alleviate the pain of suffering from two broken front legs and a partially crushed head.

For hours I struggled with the decision, not realizing I was prolonging the pain because I was vacillating and did not have the courage to let a faithful and dedicated pet pass on peacefully.

I had watched many movies of similar situations and never thought I would not have the courage.

Lady had been with me since she was a puppy and followed me dedicatedly everywhere, at some point constantly outside my bedroom door waiting for morning treats and a new exciting catapult day, when she would run around with me in Kanda Estates picking up birds, agama lizards, anything but toads, which she found out one day were a bitter taste and unworthy of such single-minded devastation from my catapult.

CEPAs Projected GDP Growth Rates for 2012

By http://www.cepa.org

In recent times the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has been processing and publishing more data on the economy than it was doing previously. More generally, rapid technological advancements, changes in data gathering, information processing and methodology have been numerous, especially with the rebasing of the national accounts. Commendable though these efforts have been, the rapid changes have more often than not led to frequent revisions of the data and sometimes withdrawal of published data on account of errors and omissions, which create undue embarrassment to the Service impacting negatively on its credibility.

ROBUST FIRST QUARTER PERFORMANCE KEEPS ECONOMY ON GROWTH TARGET

Source: Center For Policy Analysis (CEPA), Ghana.  http://www.cepa.org

Introduction

The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) currently provides three interrelated measures of real GDP. For any specified period of time  typically a quarter or calendar year  real GDP is the constant price (2006) value of relevant economic activities in that specified period. Constant prices are used in the valuation in order to eliminate the effect of inflation which otherwise could confuse the assessment of economic performance. The growth rate is obtained by comparing the value of the current period with that of a previous period. The three measures of data are the following:

•  year-on-year for each of the four quarters of the calendar year, defined by GSS as comparing current economic developments with that of the same period in the previous year. There is little or no influence by seasonal factors;
•  quarter-on-quarter for each of the four quarters in comparison with the preceding quarter defined by GSS as providing a short-term (six months) picture of current economic developments. The estimates are influenced by seasonal factors that are caused by economic behaviour or recurrent exogenous factors such as weather patterns, holidays, religious events etc ; and
•  the current calendar year compared to the previous calendar year  the more common measure used in public discussions, as for example: the economy grew at 14.1 percent in 2011.

Moreover, all of the above measures of economic performance are subject to periodic revisions. According to the GSS, revisions provide the opportunity for incorporation of additional and improved data. For example, some data that were not available at the released date are incorporated through revisions into subsequent releases.

More Bonds Needed

Ghana’s economy is 75 percent bigger than previously calculated, the country’s Statistical Service said, slashing the relative size of the fiscal deficit and the current-account shortfall.

The West African nation’s gross domestic product this year is 44.8 billion cedis ($31.2 billion), compared with the previous estimate of 25.6 billion cedis, Grace Bediako, head of the Accra-based agency, told reporters today.

“The revisions will be a huge positive for the relative risk matrix” of Ghana, Stephen Bailey-Smith, an analyst at Standard Bank Plc in London, said in a note to clients. The changes “should foster a rating upgrade.”