Government has rubbished allegations by Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia that the 1 billion dollar Eurobond raised in September this year was used to artificially shore up the cedi from depreciating against major foreign currencies.
According to the 2016 Vice Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party(NPP), the money has been used to reduce government’s indebtedness at the Central Bank and not its original purpose.
But speaking to Citi Business News , a Deputy Minister Of Finance Mona Quartey said the allegations were false, “these assertions were made in the UK , it was within what seemed like a political rally but those assertions or allegations are far from the truth”.
She clarified that ,”in our new debt management strategy , where we want to take most of our short term debts and put them into longer tenure . A little bit of that money goes into that restructuring , I think about 200 million or so goes into that restructuring “.
Addressing a group of UK-based Ghanaian professionals at a breakfast meeting in London , the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana Dr Bawumia asked government to “list projects [undertaken with the fund] for all to see, since they were missing in the 2015 budget, read on 19th last week.”
Government assured that proceeds from the recent Eurobond issue would be used for its intended purpose.
Mona Quartey said 250 million dollars of the 1 billion dollars was to be seed capital for the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund.
According to her , 750 million dollars was to be used for capital expenditures, refinancing and counterpart funding requirements.
“all these projects in the various sectors are listed in the 2015 budget , … the budget is a multi-year budget 2015/2016/2017 .All those projects that have began are listed in there under energy ,roads , health among others”, she stated.
Mona Quartey stressed that government won’t be distracted by the allegations by Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia.
By: Rabiu Alhassan/citifmonline.com/Ghana