The Bank of Ghana has released its 2020 Annual Report and Financial Statements for the 2020 fiscal year.

This comes after the central bank held its 102nd Monetary Policy Committee meeting to review economic developments of the country with an announcement of the policy rate decision to follow.

In the Governor’s foreword of the statement, Dr Ernest Addison pointed the global economy went through a turbulent period in 2020 with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The intensity and gravity of the human, economic, and social costs associated with the pandemic were unprecedented. This posed enormous challenges to global public policy and prompted synchronised massive fiscal stimulus packages and supportive monetary policy measures to deal with the fallouts from the crisis. The impact of the pandemic was dire, with sharp contraction in the global economy and heightened uncertainty across financial and commodity markets.”

Touching on the domestic economy, the Bank of Ghana Governor said, “growth momentum slowed sharply due to the adverse effects of the pandemic. Real GDP growth declined to a record 0.4 percent, the slowest in several decades.”

“At the same time, inflationary pressures emerged from the imposition of COVID-related restrictions, which resulted in food price pressures during the second quarter,” he added.

Meanwhile, the central bank on Monday, September 27, 2021 kept its policy rate unchanged at 13.5 percent citing inflation will remain within the medium-term target band but closer to the upper limit in the near term, in the absence of further unexpected shocks.

See the full report below: