Ghana Crosses the $100 Billion Threshold: How a Nation Rebuilt Its Economy From the Brink and What Comes Next

Just three years after Ghana was forced to enter a debt restructuring programme and watched its currency collapse, its inflation spike to record highs, and its credit ratings reduced to default territory, the country has crossed a milestone that would have been unthinkable at the height of the crisis: a gross domestic product (GDP) exceeding $100 billion.

Finance Minister Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson announced the development in Accra on Monday, February 23, 2026, describing 2025 as one of the most significant years of economic recovery in Ghana’s recent history. In a video posted on X, Forson said the administration had inherited an economy valued at less than $80 billion but had since overseen a broad-based rebound that pushed nominal GDP well past the $100 billion threshold.

More significantly, the government is projecting that nominal GDP could reach $140 billion by end-2026 — a level that would potentially rank Ghana as Africa’s seventh-largest economy. “The size of Ghana’s economy is projected to reach 140 billion United States dollars by end-2025, making it the seventh-largest economy in Africa,” the minister said, adding that the private sector could leverage the expansion to support President Mahama’s economic transformation agenda.

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The scale of Ghana’s recovery makes the $100 billion milestone more than a nominal headline. It represents a country that, in less than three years, restructured billions in external debt, defeated an inflation crisis that reached 54% at its peak, and rebuilt its foreign reserves from near-zero to levels that provide several months of import cover.

From Crisis to Recovery: The Scale of the Turnaround

To appreciate where Ghana stands today, it helps to understand where it stood in early 2023. Inflation had reached a record 54.1% in December 2022, the cedi had collapsed, and the government was negotiating a $3 billion IMF Extended Credit Facility arrangement — its largest programme on the continent — to stabilise the fiscal position. At the end of 2024, conditions had deteriorated further: the cedi had depreciated 19.2% against the dollar, the 91-day Treasury bill rate stood at 27.7%, and the primary fiscal balance was recording a deficit of 3.0% of GDP.

The reversal since then has been striking. Speaking on February 23, 2026, Minister Forson laid out the headline numbers: inflation had declined for thirteen consecutive months, falling from 23.5% in January 2025 to just 3.8% in January 2026 — the lowest level recorded since the consumer price index was rebased in 2021. The 91-day Treasury bill rate plunged from 27.7% at end-2024 to 6.5% by February 2026. Average commercial bank lending rates fell from 30.25% to 20.45% during 2025, easing the cost of credit for businesses and households alike.

Perhaps most dramatically, the Ghana cedi staged a historic appreciation. By end-December 2025, the currency had strengthened by 40.7% against the US dollar — reversing the painful depreciation of the prior year — while simultaneously advancing 30.9% against the pound sterling and 24.0% against the euro. Bloomberg had named the cedi the world’s strongest performing currency against the dollar as recently as April 2025.

On the fiscal side, Ghana’s public debt fell from GH¢726.7 billion in December 2024 to GH¢641.0 billion by December 2025. As a share of GDP, the debt ratio dropped from 61.8% to 45.3% — ahead of the medium-term target set under the IMF programme. The government achieved a primary surplus of 1.9% of GDP by October 2025, more than three times the initial programme target of 0.6%.

Real Growth Gains Traction Across Sectors

The headline GDP numbers are backed by real growth momentum. According to government data, real GDP grew by 6.1% in the first three quarters of 2025, driven primarily by services and agriculture. Non-oil growth reached 7.5%, signalling that the expansion was not merely an extractive industry story but was broadening into the parts of the economy that generate jobs and household income.

Ghana’s economic structure is one of West Africa’s more diversified. Services account for roughly 47% of GDP, manufacturing and mining 31%, and agriculture 22%. The services sector grew by 5.8% in 2024, while manufacturing and mining expanded by 9.3%. The digital, financial services, and construction sectors have also emerged as faster-growing components of the economy.

A particularly important development driving the 2025 numbers has been credit conditions. The sharp fall in Treasury bill rates and commercial lending rates has begun to unlock private sector borrowing. Credit to the private sector expanded by GH¢17.1 billion in 2025, with further growth projected into 2026. The Bank of Ghana’s governor, Johnson P. Asiama, has noted that while private sector credit remains the lowest among Ghana’s regional peers, improving risk management frameworks at commercial banks are laying the groundwork for a more sustained credit expansion.

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Gold, Cocoa, and the Export Boom That Powered the Numbers

Underpinning Ghana’s nominal GDP growth is a spectacular export performance. Total export receipts reached $31.1 billion in 2025, nearly doubling from $19.1 billion in 2024 — a record outturn driven overwhelmingly by gold.

Gold export earnings surged to approximately $20 billion in 2025, almost double the $10.3 billion recorded the previous year. The Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), a state entity created to formalise and channel gold export proceeds through the official banking system, has been credited with a significant share of this improvement. The GoldBod model captures foreign exchange that previously leaked out of the formal economy through informal trading channels. According to Bank of Ghana Governor Asiama, the GoldBod initiative generated about $8 billion in its first year, contributing directly to the rapid rebuild of international reserves. Today, Ghana’s gross international reserves stand at $13.8 billion, providing 5.7 months of import cover — compared with just two weeks at the height of the 2023 crisis.

Gold now accounts for the single largest share of export receipts by a wide margin — more than 83% of Ghana’s total exports, when combined with cocoa and oil. As Africa’s largest gold producer — a title Ghana claimed from South Africa — the metal’s strategic importance to the economy is difficult to overstate.

Cocoa was the second-largest contributor to the 2025 export surge. Cocoa export earnings nearly doubled to $3.8 billion in 2025, from $1.9 billion the previous year, driven by improved output volumes and elevated global cocoa prices during the year. The cocoa industry employs approximately 800,000 farm families across ten of Ghana’s sixteen administrative regions, making it a critical pillar not just of export earnings but of rural employment and household income. However, the sector faces ongoing structural pressures including disease and competition for farmland from informal gold mining, and cocoa futures fell to their lowest level since late 2023 in February 2026, flagging potential headwinds ahead.

Oil exports moved in the opposite direction in 2025, declining to $2.6 billion from $3.8 billion the prior year — a reflection of softer global crude prices rather than any structural shift in output. The hydrocarbons sector, which includes offshore production from the Jubilee and TEN fields, remains an important component of fiscal revenues and is expected to stabilise as new exploration activity expands along the Gulf of Guinea.

The combined effect of the export surge was a trade balance surplus of $13.66 billion in 2025, and a current account surplus of over $9.1 billion for the full year — a dramatic turnaround from a position of persistent deficits over more than two decades.

International Confidence: Rating Upgrades and the IMF’s Endorsement

Ghana’s macroeconomic recovery has earned recognition from the international financial community. In June 2025, Fitch upgraded Ghana’s credit rating to B- with a Stable Outlook, citing the successful restructuring of $13.1 billion in Eurobond debt, falling inflation, a strengthening cedi, and narrowing fiscal deficits. The agency projected inflation would fall further to 10% in 2026, and that debt as a share of GDP would decline to 60%, down from 93% at the peak of the crisis in 2022.

Moody’s followed with its own upgrade in October 2025, raising Ghana’s long-term foreign currency rating to Caa1 from Caa2 and changing the outlook to stable — acknowledging continued fiscal consolidation, progress in debt restructuring, and improved foreign reserve buffers. The rating agency pointed to the binding rules introduced under the Public Financial Management Act amendments of March 2025, which require an annual primary surplus of at least 1.5% of GDP and a reduction in the public debt ratio to 45% or below by 2034 as structural anchors for continued fiscal discipline.

The IMF, for its part, completed the fifth review of Ghana’s $3 billion Extended Credit Facility in December 2025, allowing for an immediate disbursement of approximately $385 million and bringing total disbursements under the arrangement to about $2.8 billion. The Fund noted that growth had exceeded expectations through September 2025, inflation had returned to the Bank of Ghana’s target range, and the external sector had strengthened on the back of robust gold and cocoa exports. The IMF called the authorities’ programme ownership “strong” while cautioning that continued structural reforms were needed to fully restore macroeconomic stability.

Finance Minister Forson, reacting to the Fitch upgrade in June, captured the administration’s ambition in brief: “I assure you — this is only the beginning. We are unwavering in our resolve to fully revive the economy and deliver lasting relief and shared prosperity.”

The Private Sector Imperative and the Road to $140 Billion

With the recovery now established in the data, the Mahama administration is turning its attention to whether the gains can be transformed into a durable expansion — one that translates macroeconomic stability into jobs and household welfare at scale.

Forson used his February 23 announcement to send a direct message to the private sector: businesses should reflect the improving macroeconomic environment in their pricing. With inflation at 3.8% and the cedi stable — trading at approximately GH¢10.97–10.99 to the dollar in early February 2026 — importers and traders in particular are operating with significantly lower input cost pressures than they were twelve months ago. The minister argued that this stability should flow through to consumer prices. The government has also abolished several nuisance taxes — including the Betting Tax, Emission Tax, and e-Levy — and reduced VAT to ease the cost of doing business.

The government’s 2026 Budget, presented to Parliament in November 2025, projects real GDP growth of at least 4.8% in 2026, underpinned by continued revenue mobilisation, tight expenditure controls, and strategic investment under the Big Push Infrastructure Programme — a GH¢30 billion capital expenditure plan targeting roads, ports, and energy systems. The government has also earmarked GH¢57.5 billion in total capital expenditure for 2026, representing 3.6% of GDP.

Reaching $140 billion in nominal GDP by end-2026 would require a combination of real output growth, continued cedi stability, and favourable commodity prices — particularly for gold. Analysts at Focus Economics note that while the economic recovery has real foundations, risks remain. The cedi’s sharp appreciation could erode export competitiveness for non-traditional exports such as processed foods and textiles. Declining cocoa futures in early 2026 pose a revenue risk. And the end of Ghana’s IMF programme in April 2026 will remove a key external fiscal anchor, placing greater reliance on the domestic fiscal responsibility framework to enforce discipline.

The Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana has already raised concerns about the strong cedi, warning it threatens forex inflows and export revenue margins by making Ghanaian goods more expensive in international markets. The Association of Ghanaian Industries has similarly called for policy adjustments to sustain export viability in a stronger-cedi environment.

Still, the structural trajectory is more compelling today than at any point since Ghana’s debt crisis began. Fiscal consolidation is on track. Debt levels are declining. Reserves are at record highs. All three major credit rating agencies have now upgraded Ghana within the past eighteen months. And with the $100 billion milestone formally confirmed, the administration enters 2026 with a credibility in international markets that it has spent three difficult years rebuilding. Whether it can sustain that momentum — and translate nominal GDP growth into the job creation and economic transformation that ordinary Ghanaians need — is the challenge that now defines the Mahama era.

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By: Montel Kamau

Serrari Financial Analyst

25th February, 2026