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Ghana has requested for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and negotiations for an enhanced domestic programme (EDP) are set to begin.
The International Monetary Fund mission headed by Stéphane Roudet has arrived in Ghana for talks to start this week.
Ghana’s Finance Minister Kenneth Nana Yaw Ofori-Atta will be the team’s leader.
Talks with the IMF Mission, which will take place in the nation for the next two weeks, are set to wrap up on Friday, October 7.
Restoring macroeconomic balance and making debt service manageable are two goals of the EDP Ghana hopes to achieve.
The IMF has promised that the $3 billion agreement would be finalized before the end of the year.
In a closed-door meeting with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo earlier this month, on the sidelines of the Africa Adaptation Summit in Rotterdam, Netherlands, IMF’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told him “we understand the urgency, and we will move as quickly as possible”.
“We have started very constructive discussions already and to the people of Ghana, like everybody on this planet, you have been hurt by exogenous shocks,” she said.
The Mission is expected to meet major stakeholders including officials from the Bank of Ghana, Finance Ministry, industry and others in the next two weeks.
A team led by Carlo Sdralevich was in the country in July to engage this same stakeholder on the perfect deal for Ghana.
The team concluded thus:
“Ghana is facing a challenging economic and social situation amid an increasingly difficult global environment. The fiscal and debt situation has severely worsened following the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, investors’ concerns have triggered credit rating downgrades, capital outflows, loss of external market access, and rising domestic borrowing costs.
“In addition, the global economic shock caused by the war in Ukraine is hitting Ghana at a time when the country is still recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic shock and with limited room for maneuver. These adverse developments have contributed to slowing economic growth, accumulation of unpaid bills, a large exchange rate depreciation, and a surge in inflation.”
NKONKONSA.com
