Maybel Acquaye
A policy think tank, the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), has blamed Ghana’s economic downturn on the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) $1 billion injection for the negative impact of COVID-19.
In line with its quota, Ghana was given SDR 707.3 million ($1billion) by the IMF due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first tranche of $300 million was used for partial cover of the 2021 GH¢42 billion fiscal deficit in December 2021.
The second tranche of $638 million was used in May 2022 and the remaining balance of $61 million was used in July to cover the year’s fiscal deficit.
ACEP argued that the government’ spending of the money without “a well-defined medium-term fiscal plan” spelt doom for the country.
ACEP Senior Policy Analyst, Maybel Acquaye, said at a media engagement forum in Accra that the development is partly blamed on Ghana’s failure to implement timely debt restructuring measures as prescribed in the Guidance Note of the IMF.
The forum was on Ghana’s IMF SDR allocation utilization for macroeconomic stability and development.
According to her, Ghana’s quite favourable economic outlook took a turn for the worse a few months into 2022, with the Cedi depreciating against the dollar from 4.1% in 2021 to 30% in 2022.
She indicated that inflation also surged from 7.5% in May 2021 to 54.1% in December 2022, whilst the fiscal deficit reached 9.8% of GDP in 2022, missing the 6.7% target.
Mrs. Acquaye said Ghana’s Balance of Payments swung into the negative – deficit of $3.6 billion.
She called for the formulation and implementation of a comprehensive monitoring mechanism for general SDR.
By Ernest Kofi Adu