Mr Simons, revered for his expertise in economic matters, argued that there has been no evidence that the country was in a complete economic crisis.

He noted that government still has a lot of legitimacy and there was room for the govern­ment to reverse the journey into an economic crisis.

“We are not yet at the level where we have a full blown economic crisis. But we can get there.

A full blown economic crisis, literally, as you said, we did have been like Sri Lanka where you have people not been paid; shops running out of goods and riots in the streets,” he said.

“Then you get a national security crisis where the president literally runs away from the Jubilee House. We are not there. Objec­tively and evidently we are not there yet.

We have a lot of room still left. And there is also still a lot of le­gitimacy left of this government,” he said on Joy FM’s Newsfile on Saturday.

The government in order to get an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout to help it deal with balance of payments difficul­ties has being engaging in a debt restructuring programme.

The restructuring, which included a domestic debt exchange programme, has been met with re­jection from individual bondhold­ers who have demanded for direct engagement with government.

But Mr Simons claimed government can deal with the challenges before the economy plunges into a full blown crisis.

Relatedly, Mr Simons said that the upper middle class in the country would now opt for more investment opportunities abroad due to the domestic debt ex­change programme that has been introduced by the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta.

In a tweet, he said “Folks all fired up about how the economic situation will now push upper middle class folks to join the po­litical fray for more accountability.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, but it will just push them to look for more investment options abroad, causing more economic problems for Ghana.”