Prof. Godfred Bokpin
A PROFESSOR of Finance at the University of Ghana Business School, Godfred Bokpin, has called for a restructure of Government’s Domestic Exchange Programme.
He shared this knowledge at a roundtable discussion organised by the economic and governance platform, Coalition for Democratic Accountability and Inclusive Governance, and WeBeCitizens at the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Accra.
The Debt Exchange Programme, which was introduced by the Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to help alleviate the country’s financial woes, is asking bondholders to exchange existing domestic bonds with new ones which would mature in 2027, 2029, 2032, and 2037.
Since the plans for the debt exchange was made public, some societal bodies have spoken against the programme fearing it might cause major damages to their industries.
According to the Prof Bokpin, the current proposed exchange was not in a good shape and as a result, a number of unions were complaining against it therefore, the programme needed to be restructured so as to ease the anxiety of the public as well as prevent further damage from happening in the economy.
“We are hoping that at the back of this, Government will repackage the debt exchange programme. The package is currently not in a good shape and it could systematically weaken the balance sheet of the participating financial institutions and if we are not careful, in our attempt to polish the public balance sheet, we may be creating some crisis that later will come to bite us. So let’s result all of that comprehensively now and let’s do it in a way that preserves financial sector stability,” he explained.
In addition, he shared that although the Government’s return to the IMF was creditable; the aid to be gotten from the fund was incapable of solving Ghana’s major problems.
“The IMF programme is insufficient to address Ghana’s problems. If we want to come out of this comprehensively, we need to initiate governance reforms. Ghana’s problems are more of Governance and that is what contributes to the economic mess,” he said.
He further encouraged the citizenry and governmental bodies to come together and make sure that the right reforms were made.
BY Abigail Atinuke Seyram Adeyemi & Nafisatu Abdul Razak