The Minister of Finance, Mr. Seth Terkper has revealed that Ghana is undergoing key processes for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund(IMF).
It is unclear when government initiated this process since last week the IMF revealed that it had not received any request for a bailout request from Ghana.
The Director of IMF’s Communication Department Gerry Rice, last week told reporters that the Ghanaian authorities have not requested a new program from the IMF.
But speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, the Finance Minister stated that Ghana is currently working to be eligible for an IMF bailout.
“Under Article 6 and Article 4 of the IMF mandate ,every member country that signs onto programme whether big or small has to submit a report to the IMF to look into the state of the economy,” he said
He further noted that a consolidated document has been presented to Parliament and the IMF too as part of the process.
“Since we have discussed these measures with them, what we did was to present a consolidated document which was presented to Parliament to the IMF boss to clarify what we are doing, ” he said
In a related development, Mr. Terkper responded to critics of the government’s National Economic Forum saying the forum has become necessary considering the country’s middle-income status.
Government will be holding a National Economic Forum to discuss the state of the economy and also define new policies to grow the economy.
Critics have described the 3-day forum which will be held in Akosombo as a waste of time and money. The opposition New Patriotic Party has also said it will boycott the forum because government has already submitted its plans for the economy to the IMF.
But Mr. Terpker said “we have already discussed with IMF what we want to do, so the people coming tomorrow are just coming to endorse what we have already agreed to do.”
The Ghanaian economy is currently undergoing some challenges with the depreciation of the cedi against all major trading currencies.
Some have said government’s failure to halt the depreciation of the cedi has led to increase in the cost of living thus burdening Ghanaians even more.
Ghanaians have been experiencing load-shedding, water shortages and increase in utility tariffs and fuel prices.
By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana