Dr. Ernest Addison, BoG Governor
A government is expected to record significant revenue loss according to a yet-to-be-released BoG report.
The Bank of Ghana Governor, Dr. Ernest Addison who revealed said the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) is the reason for the high revenue loss.
Dr. Addison was responding to questions posed by the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament concerning the delay in the release of the report.
He disclosed that the delay in producing the report is partly due to a lot of work being done by the auditors to assess the level of impact of the DDEP.
“The reason being the domestic debt exchange that the government had to undertake, as you’re aware, most of the banks are lending to government in various instruments,” he said.
“So there has been a lot of work being done by the auditors in trying to assess the impact of the exchange. As we recently pointed out, we had to write to the Ministry of Finance to notify him of the delay,” he explained.
Dr. Addison stated that the DDEP ended recently with cocoa bill and dollar denominated bonds included.
This, he said required the central bank to ask for more time to properly examine the situation and put together a comprehensive statement.
“The domestic debt exchanges ended last week; the cocoa bill, the dollar-denominated bills – they were only settled last week. So, all of these have an impact on the Bank of Ghana’s account,” he added. “But I can confirm that we will make a significant loss in 2022,”
The Domestic Debt Exchange Programme was introduced in December 2022 as part of conditions to reprofile Ghana’s growing debt stock.
It was also a prerequisite exercise to secure an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout request of $3 billion.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri