Ghana's Finance Chief: Recovery Must Mean Real Jobs

Ghana’s finance minister told University of Ghana faculty and students that economic stabilisation was never the point of his government’s reforms. The goal, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson said, is decent jobs and higher incomes for people who’ve borne the cost of getting here.

“Stabilisation was never the destination. It was the price of entry,” Forson said during the engagement with faculty and students.

That framing matters. Ordinary Ghanaians paid to restore stability, he acknowledged, and they’re owed a return.

What Has Been Gained

Forson didn’t dispute that the recovery has been hard-won. He laid out where things stand: “Ghana has fought hard to restore stability. Inflation has come down. Confidence is returning. Debt pressures are being managed. The economy is recovering,” he said.

Then came the caveat. “But recovery is not enough.”

The next task, the minister said, is building on those gains by expanding production, attracting investment and creating opportunities that improve people’s livelihoods. “Stability must now become production, exports, investment, decent jobs and higher incomes. That is the central purpose of the New Economy,” he said.

The Vision for Production and Work

Forson described a Ghana that produces more of what it consumes. He pointed to adding value to the country’s agricultural and mineral resources rather than simply shipping them out, and to creating decent jobs at scale.

The approach puts public investment at the service of private enterprise, he said. It opens opportunities for businesses to invest, expand and employ more Ghanaians. In other words, the state sets the table, and the private sector is expected to fill it with work.

Forson said the transition aims to ensure that recovery benefits reach the people whose sacrifices helped make it possible. The New Economy, in his words, is about building a Ghana that “turns the sacrifices of stabilisation into real benefits for the Ghanaian people.”

The Test Ahead

The speech sets a clear standard for measuring the government. Lower inflation and returning confidence are real gains, but Forson himself said they aren’t the finish line. Whether stability becomes “decent jobs and higher incomes” is now the question. Households will answer it for themselves.

The minister’s emphasis on “decent” matters. Jobs alone don’t lift living standards; the quality and pay of that work do. His remarks tie the government’s credibility to outcomes people can feel in their wages, not just figures on a macroeconomic dashboard.

Why This Matters: Stabilisation programmes often demand the most from people with the least cushion, while the promised payoff can remain distant. Forson’s own words concede the point: stability was a price paid, and he’s now publicly committed to delivering something back. That commitment gives citizens, civil society and lawmakers a benchmark for accountability. If inflation is falling but jobs and incomes aren’t rising, the recovery will have reached the balance sheet without reaching the household. The emphasis on value addition and decent employment points toward a more inclusive model, but success depends on whether benefits flow to the people who bore the sacrifices, rather than staying with those who were already comfortable.