President John Mahama has pointed out that the success of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) three-year extended credit facility approved for Ghana will largely depend on citizens.
[contextly_sidebar id=”FDISASqU7yFgsTej0p7pYk1H2VHdHxZX”]“This needs a lot of hard work on our own part because the success of the extended credit facility will depend principally on ourselves, not on the IMF, not on the World Bank or not on our development partners. It means that we must exercise fiscal discipline and we must live within our means,” he explained
The IMF approved an extended credit facility worth $918 million last Friday for Ghana after several months of deliberations.
The Ghana government turned to the IMF in 2014 for a bailout as a result of high inflation rates, depreciation of the cedi, huge public sector wage bill and a host of other factors which were crippling the economy.
Finance Minister, Seth Terkper has said that the expected initial tranche of $114 million will be used to shore up the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG) declining reserves.
IMF programme will stabilize economy
Though President Mahama is optimistic the facility would help stabilize the economy, he insisted that the country would have to work hard and be disciplined in its spending to achieve the objective of the programme.
President Mahama who made the statement when he joined the Muslim leaders in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region to celebrate the birth of Prophet Mohammed, described the IMF deal as good news for Ghana because “it allows us to work together with our bilateral and multilateral partners to stabilize our economy and accelerate the growth of our economy.”
“At the same time it allows us to deepen our social protection intervention to help cushion the poor and vulnerable in our society,” he expressed.
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By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana