Eighty percent (80) of Ghanaians believe economic conditions in the country are very bad, whereas 52 percent say the conditions have gone from bad to worse.

This is according to the latest Afrobarometer report released by the Centre for Democratic Development on Wednesday.

Afrobarometer is an African-led, non-partisan research network that conducts public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, economic conditions, and related issues across more than 30 countries in Africa. 

According to the report titled ‘Government scores poor marks on economic management’, Ghana’s government performed poorly on the economic management scorecard of most citizens.

Between 1,200 and 2,400 respondents were involved in the nationwide face-to-face interviews.

The report’s findings revealed that Ghanaians want the government to give top priority to managing the economy, which it said was a shift in policy priorities from 2005, 2008, and 2012 Afrobarometer surveys, in which unemployment was the leading policy priority of most Ghanaians.

“The negative evaluations of government economic performance also found expression in a finding that a majority of Ghanaians believe the country is moving in the ‘wrong direction’.”

Some key findings enumerated in the reports are:

• Large majorities of Ghanaians gave ratings of “fairly bad” or “very bad” to government’s performance in managing key macro-economic indicators such as the economy (72%), improving living standards of the poor (76%), creating jobs (76%), keeping prices down (81%), and narrowing gaps between rich and poor (76%) (Figure 1).
• Ghanaians consider economic management (18%) as the most important problem that they want government to address. This is followed by education and electricity (12% each) and health (10%). 
• Two-thirds  (66%) of Ghanaians say the government is managing their topmost priority (i.e. the first most important problem) “fairly badly” or “very badly” (Figure 2).
• An overwhelming majority of Ghanaians (82%) say the country is moving in the "wrong direction," compared to 57% who thought so in 2012 (Figure 3).

Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu has questioned the representativeness of the 2,400 respondents when the country’s population is a little over 25 million.

Though he said government “respects the views of Ghanaians”, he was quick to rebuff claims that the country is moving in the wrong direction.