The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that the first round of discussions on a possible IMF-supported programme for Ghana will last for ten days. The discussions will begin on Tuesday September 16 and end on September 25, 2014.
The IMF team, led by Joël-Toujas-Bernaté begun talks with the Ghana team which is led by former Finance Minister and chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Kwesi Botchwey.
The team will be supported by the current Finance Minister Seth Terkpeh.
According to a statement from the IMF released today, “discussions will continue during the coming weeks, including at the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Washington DC in October.”
Apart from meeting government officials, the IMF team will also meet players in the private sector, and the donor community during the discussion period.
On August 8, IMF Management received a formal request from the Ghanaian authorities to initiate discussions on an IMF-supported program.
President Mahama has said that the purpose of pursuing an IMF deal was not simply to dig the country out of a short term fiscal hole and the government does not primarily want cash from the IMF.
Instead, it wants to work with the IMF, the World Bank and the African Development Bank on an ambitious set of institutional reforms, programmes to alleviate poverty and programmes to spur job creation through the private sector.
“We are looking to work with the IMF, both to consolidate the fiscal but then also to carry out the kind of institutional reforms that would be necessary to sustain that macro economic stability so that going forward, hopefully, this country will probably not go into an IMF program again,” he said.
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By: Nana Boakye-Yiadom/citifmonline.com/Ghana