Officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will touch down in the country on Wednesday, July 6, 2022 to initiate the process for negotiations with the government on the possible bail-out.
the week-long engagement between the Ministry of Finance representing government and officials of IMF will chart the way forward.
The outcome of the meeting with regards to the bailout programme and its conditionalities will all be announced after the meeting.
The IMF team will consist of senior officials from the Fund as well as local staff based here in Ghana.
Analysts suggest that it would take at least three months for a programme to be agreed upon between the parties.
Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has assured that there will be frank negotiations with the Fund.
According to him, government expect some very frank negotiations which will determine where the country is going in terms of the
future of the Free Senior High School (SHS) and the One District One Factory (1D1F) initiatives due to an IMF porgramme.
With regards to what the nation should expect, Mr Oppong Nkrumah mentioned that “First of all, we, in March put out a programme to mitigate the impact of this second crisis on the Ghanaian. In the last one week, we have been doing a lot of assessment with how well it has worked.
“What has happened after that, we are of the view that we need to have an enhanced economic programme that gives you more than just those specific issues that we had raised. That programme needs to be funded from various sources. You need domestic resources to fund that programme.
“That is why instruments like the Electronic Transfer Levy , VAT, Property Rate, other things seeking to raise domestic resources to fund that programme. Then you need money from the international capital markets whose access is a bit difficult now because we have been downgraded but we have at least got about a billion dollars in Parliament we are hoping to pass and add to the resources we have to fund the programme to improve the condition of our people.
“Then you are also looking for a concessional facility like what we will be discussing with the Fund to add to that so it is a mix of resources that are coming in to fund our domestic economic programme and we are that we will be successful in that area.”
He added “negotiations are negotiations, we are looking for opportunity to sit with ladies and gentlemen of the Fund, and show them our enhanced domestic progarmme and explain to them why we believe that we need their resourcing in some particular areas to assist us on the balance of payment side which also translates into currency stability, some bit of macro stability that would improve the liquidity for the fiscal as well.”
On Friday July 1, 2022 President Akufo-Addo gave instruction to Mr Ofori-Atta to commence the engagements with the IMF following a telephone conversation between the President and the IMF Managing Director, Ms Kristalina Georgieva, conveying Ghana’s decision to engage with the Fund.
The Ministry of Information announced this in a statement.
The Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta will be leading the negotiations with the IMF in the coming days.
However there is mix reaction after the announcement.
By Vincent Kubi