An Economist and Chief Executive Officer of Dalex Finance, Mr Joe Jackson, has called for urgent reforms to increase Ghana’s domestic retention of export earnings, arguing that persistent currency depreciation is driven more by value leakages than excessive imports.
Delivering a public lecture themed “Ananse Stories about Ghana’s Economy” at an event organised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Ghana (CIMG), Mr Jackson said Ghana’s long‑held narrative that currency weakness resulted mainly from high imports or low exports was misleading.
He explained that although Ghana had recorded consistent trade surpluses in recent years, the expected strengthening of the cedi had not materialised due to significant outflows through profit repatriation, service payments, and investment income.
According to him, official Bank of Ghana data showed that between 2017 and 2024, Ghana’s exports exceeded imports by billions of dollars annually, yet the cedi depreciated from about GH¢4.5 to nearly GH¢15 to the US dollar over the period.
“This contradiction tells us that the problem is not how much we export or import, but how much of the export value we actually keep,” Mr Jackson said.
He noted that leakages from net service imports and profit repatriation had, in several years, exceeded Ghana’s total trade surplus, effectively neutralising any positive balance from exports.
Using the extractive sector as an illustration, Mr Jackson said gold and oil account for about 70 per cent of Ghana’s export earnings, yet more than half of their value is transferred abroad.
He stated that in 2024, Ghana earned about US$11.9 billion from gold exports but retained only about 46 per cent, with the remaining value leaving the economy in the form of profits, management fees, and external financing costs.
Oil exports, he added, recorded an even lower retention rate.
“For every US$100 earned from gold exports, about US$53 leaves the country. In the oil sector, about US$65 leaves,” he said.
Mr Jackson argued that this structure made it “impossible” for exports alone to stabilise the currency, noting that countries with lower export volumes, such as South Africa and Botswana, retained more value due to higher local ownership and participation.
He called for deliberate policies to increase domestic ownership and control in the extractive industries, stressing that local participation should mean Ghanaian-controlled companies rather than foreign entities registered locally.
Turning to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), Mr Jackson challenged the widely held view that SMEs, in general, were the engine of growth, describing it as another “Ananse story” that oversimplified economic reality.
He observed that despite over 60 different SME support programmes launched in the past decade, productivity and growth remained weak, with a large percentage of SMEs collapsing within their first three years.
“Growth is driven by a small number of exceptional, highly productive firms, not by spreading limited resources thinly across struggling enterprises,” he stated.
Mr Jackson urged policymakers to identify and support potential national champions regardless of political cycles, citing countries such as South Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia, which deliberately nurtured large, competitive firms.
He also expressed concern about youth unemployment and job vulnerability, linking them to low productivity, weak domestic value chains, and insufficient capital for Ghanaian-owned companies. Mr Jackson concluded that Ghana does not have a dollar shortage problem but a value retention problem, and warned that without reforms, recent improvements in the cedi would prove temporary.
“We don’t just need more exports; we need ownership of our exports,” he said.
Michael Abbiw, the National President of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Ghana (CIMG), said the lecture had provoked critical reflection on economic policy execution and the role of business leaders in national development.
By: Christian Akorlie / businesspostonline
