A research by policy think tank Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) has predicted that Ghana’s GDP could shrink to as low as 2 percent this year.
Micro and small businesses in Ghana could be losing 2.2 million dollars per day as a result of the power crisis, ISSER has also revealed.
According to the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research, small business owners income have decreased by 48 percent due to lack of regular electricity.
Some small scale business operators have been sharing with Joy News the impact of the power crisis on their businesses.
“The power crisis is affecting me a lot …I used to make 3000 a day but right now I am making 2000 and I am not impressed about it,” a business owner said.
Most businesses are looking up to God’s intervention to turn things around for them, another operator told Joy News, adding that all the incomes he made are used to fuel his plant to keep him in business in the hard way. How he manages to pay his workers is a miracle to him.
Businesses such as those into dressmaking have now resorted to operating their machines manually, which is less expensive but slows production.
Meanwhile, a Senior Research Fellow at ISSER Dr Charles Ackah says many more businesses are expected to lay off workers and shutdown as desperation sets in.
There would be revenue loss; also the already huge unemployment rate would automatically shoot up further, he noted.
“That means it is going to have a general effect on our GDP, we estimate that by the end of 2015 GDP would have fallen to about 2 to 2.3 percent. Already, last year’s GDP was 4.1 percent that is lower than we have had in the last 10 years. The average GDP we have had over the last two decades is about 5 point something percent.”
