Ghana's economy is likely to suffer a major downward setback for the next two to three years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta has said.

According to him, despite government's resolve to rebuild and revitalize the economy, a quick recovery is nowhere near insight.

Mr Ofori-Atta speaking in an interview on PM Express on July 16 said; “I had indicated what I termed trapezoid recovery which means sort of the plummeting impact of the 6.8% to the 0.9% and the slow slide potentially downwards for about two, three years before we pick up again.”

Despite the downward setback, an optimistic Ofori-Atta adds, Ghana's economic growth will only rebound should government institute stringent measures to intervene the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’m a lot more confident of the resilience we have shown and I think if we intervene very strongly and put classical economics aside, and say we’re going to intervene boldly and make sure that the supply response comes, get people working, get people independent, I think we’ll come out much faster,” the Finance Minister said.

Following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Ghana risks losing over US$1 billion in revenue due to shortfall impacts.

Ghana's budget deficit for 2020 is likely to double the legal limit as a result of the adverse impact of pandemic on the economy which sees an undoing of the fiscal discipline that was supposed to curb financial bailouts from other countries.

Ken Ofori-Atta in a recent interview with Bloomberg explained Ghana’s fiscal gap is forecasted to widen beyond 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from an adjusted outlook in March of 7.8 percent.