A Professor at the University of Ghana Business School, Godfred Bokpin, has urged the Mahama administration to prioritise job creation for the country’s growing unemployed youth rather than celebrating increases in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
According to him, many countries are moving away from glorifying GDP growth as the primary measure of economic success, and Ghana should draw lessons from such approaches.
“The economy will continue to dominate the political discussions, especially when we are talking about job growth. We have to look beyond GDP growth and look at Job growth. People have finished school, and they are looking for jobs,” Prof. Bokpin said in an interview on Key Points on TV3 on Saturday, December 27.
Meanwhile, the government on November 17 said the 2026 Budget had been carefully structured to drive economic transformation and reduce poverty, stressing that traditional indicators such as GDP do not fully reflect improvements in the living conditions of citizens.
The Ministry of Finance explained that although GDP is widely used as a benchmark for economic performance, it has limitations when assessing poverty reduction. This position was outlined at the KPMG/UNDP 2026 Post-Budget Forum held on Monday, November 17, 2025, in Accra.
Speaking on behalf of the Finance Minister, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, the Chief Economist Officer and Director of the Real Sector Division at the Ministry of Finance, Samuel Danquah Arkhurst, underscored the need to look beyond GDP when evaluating the overall health of the economy.
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