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The World's Worst Economies

These countries aren't unlucky--they're poor by design.
Daniel Fisher,Forbes

June 9, 2010

Ghana has the world's largest manmade lake and the 1-gigawatt Aksombo Hydroelectric Plant, built to supply electricity to Africa's largest aluminum smelter. But the smelter has been idle since 2009, a casualty of low aluminum prices and persistent electricity shortages that have forced the government to divert the power elsewhere.

Ghana is a typical example of the world's worst-managed economies: It's a country that shouldn't be poor, but it is. The West African nation's gross domestic product per capita fell 9% last year to $621, ranking it 154th out of 184 countries tracked by the International Monetary Fund, below resource-impoverished Haiti. With a $3 billion trade deficit last year and $4.9 billion in external debt, Ghana is struggling to pay its bills even as it sits on some of the world's biggest reserves of gold and bauxite, as well as considerable amounts of offshore oil, which is being developed by Anadarko Petroleum and others.

"Ghana's problems are mostly homegrown," said Peter Allum, the IMF's mission chief to Ghana, in February. Forbes ranks Ghana ninth on our list of the world's worst economies......More