By: Franklin Asare-Donkoh
The Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Dr. Nii Moi Thompson, has debunked claims by a section of the public that borrowing to address Ghana’s infrastructure gap is bad.
According to him, borrowing from external sources to address the infrastructure gap is not inherently problematic; the real challenge lies in how funds are utilised and managed.
“There is nothing wrong with getting infrastructure financing from abroad; it’s done and is good. The idea is to leverage what you have. So, you could have $10 billion, and you can leverage that to raise a hundred billion, and therefore you can get more done,” he said.
The NDPC Chair, speaking in an interview on Accra-based Channel One TV’s current affairs programme The Point of View yesterday, Monday, October 27, 2025, also raised concerns over the urgent need for transparency and strong governance in Ghana’s infrastructure financing, questioning the fate of billions of dollars previously raised for national development.
His comments come on the heels of Ghana’s substantial Eurobond borrowing with little or nothing to show for it over the past four years under the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo–Bawumia-led government.
By the end of 2021, the country had raised a total of $11 billion in Eurobond debt — $2 billion in 2018, $3 billion in 2019, $3 billion in 2020 during the pandemic, and a final $3 billion in 2021.
For Ghana, debt servicing obligations — covering interest payments alone — were projected to reach approximately $5 billion in 2023, including both domestic and external debts.
On governance, Dr. Thompson highlighted lessons from international best practices, noting that in some countries, borrowing short-term to fund long-term infrastructure is strictly prohibited, and officials can face severe penalties.
“In some countries, they actually have a law against borrowing short-term to finance infrastructure. And the Minister of Finance can actually go to jail if they borrow on the short end of the market to finance infrastructure,” the NDPC Chair noted.
He emphasised that borrowed funds must be channelled into productive, self-sustaining infrastructure.
“If the money had actually gone into infrastructure — because if you did, the infrastructure pays for itself, and it becomes self-sustaining. As I sit here, no one knows what happened to the $11 billion,” Dr. Thompson stressed.
He maintained that infrastructure governance will be a central pillar in implementing Ghana’s new infrastructure plan under President John Dramani Mahama’s administration, calling for a framework that ensures funds are transparently used and effectively monitored to deliver lasting public value.
In 2022, Ghana faced major economic challenges as interest rates for emerging market bonds surged, making borrowing prohibitively expensive. The increase in sovereign bond rates was further intensified by global events, including the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Only a handful of nations — including Nigeria, South Africa, and Angola — were able to successfully issue Eurobonds in the first half of the year, while countries such as Ghana and Kenya were effectively priced out of international capital markets and, as a result, turned to IMF-supported programmes to manage their financing needs.
