Given Ghana’s status as one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and with foreign investors so bullish about its prospects, it might have been expected that Seth Terkper’s first six months as the country’s finance minister would be fairly undemanding.
Yet the former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist has been under plenty of pressure. Within six weeks of taking up his role in January, his ministry announced that Ghana’s budget deficit for 2012 ended up being 12% of gross domestic product (GDP), far higher than the projected figure of 6.7% and triple that of the 4% it recorded in 2011.
