Financialisation and Poverty Alleviation in Ghana: Myths and Realities

The neoliberal policy response to the crisis in Ghana did not succeed in reversing the economic decline in both the medium and long term. In fact, quite the opposite, rather than undoing the economic decline, Frimpong argues that the policy prescriptions further weakened the country’s ability to develop. This is because the policies intentionally and unintentionally encouraged factors that destabilised the possibility of the real productive assets to earn commensurate returns to facilitate the flow of capital to the real sectors to ensure the survival of industrial enterprises. Rising profit in the financial sector incentivised financial capitalist to divert capital into financial assets at the expense of productive investment, further decelerating the pace of real capital accumulation in the country.