Turning to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout as we are about to do for the seventeenth time has been a feature of successive governments in the country.
None of them has, however, it would appear, attracted such a wide platform of discourse as the current one the reason being the propaganda foisted around it by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) as they try abortively to associate it with a failure on the part of the government. How nonsensical that is!
To reduce the economic turmoil the country and indeed the rest of the world is grappling with to the level of street politics is to stay the least melancholic. Is that how low we have come in local politics?
For a government with a relatively better governance and economic management pedigree the NDC is merely making unnecessary hullabaloo about nothing.
Just as the leadership of the opposition NDC are clapping their hands for the de ja vu situation they are deliberately distorting the circumstances which led Ghana to join the hundreds of countries on the list of bailout seekers today.
Let it be known even as the IMF team has observed also that the latest bout of bailout application by Ghana has been prompted by the disturbing economic turbulence across the world. Only hypocrites will ignore the extent of devastation on the world economy by post COVID-19 pandemic circumstances and now the raging hostilities between Russia and Ukraine. We should not forget the fallouts from sanctions and counteractions by the West and the Russia.
While the foregone are indisputable it is our stance that we are guided by Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia’s observation that successive governments’ resort to the IMF has not remedied the underlying factors which occasioned the quest for the Fund’s hands.
Even as we wait for the bailout to correct the challenges foisted upon us by tough times we must resolve to embark on an unusual fiscal discipline to avoid what befell previous governments.
We can improve our debt situation, balance of payments and the other factors which always rear their heads even as we seek to steer away from them through fiscal discipline.
Even as the current administration’s predicament is predicated upon circumstances as noted in earlier paragraphs, different from previous ones, sufficient efforts must nonetheless be mustered as the Vice President observed to ensure that discipline in all facets of governance is upheld as a matter of policy.
Accessing the international capital market, repairing the balance of payments situation to bridge the financing gap and to stabilize the economy after the devastating fallouts of the pandemic is a helluva of a hassle which requires discipline with the political leadership especially leading the charge.
Considering what the country has gone through in the past few yet hectic months we cannot afford to ride on the same tangent as did in the previous 16 IMF bailouts.
This time we must consider breaking the cycle even the circumstances prompting the current ones differ.