President John Mahama has dismissed reports that government has taken a concrete decision to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout in the midst of current economic challenges facing the country.<\/p>\n
According to the President he is yet to decide on whether Ghana should make that move.<\/p>\n
President Mahama who made this known when he opened the National Economic Forum said \u2018I have not taken any decision to enter our country into an IMF program\u2019<\/p>\n
The Finance Minister Seth Tekper earlier hinted that the country may seek an IMF cover if it becomes necessary to lessen the current fiscal challenges<\/p>\n
However there are reports that government has already submitted a bailout proposal to the IMF.<\/p>\n
the International Monetary Fund early on clarified that it has not received any bailout proposal from Ghana government.<\/p>\n
According to the director of IMF\u2019s Communications Department Gerry Rice, \u201cthe Ghanaian authorities have not requested a new program from the IMF. The Board, discussed the Article IV review on Ghana on May the 5th, and we will have a press release on that in due course.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ghanaian economy for months has been faced with some critical ailing conditions amidst rising inflation, a depreciating currency, high budget deficit amongst others.<\/p>\n
Inflation currently stands at 14 .5 percent the highest rate since February 2010.<\/p>\n
The story is not different for the local currency the cedi.<\/p>\n
Since the beginning of the year it has depreciated by over 18 percent against the major foreign currencies the US dollar, British Pound and the Euro.<\/p>\n
According to the Bank of Ghana\u2019s latest financial stability report released in March this year the Cedi\u2019s continuous depreciation against the major trading currencies as well as the continuous hikes in inflation is having a toll on profits of banks.<\/p>\n
It is in line with these economic challenges that government decided to hold the National Economic Forum.<\/p>\n
The forum is expected to concentrate on six thematic areas including restoring macroeconomic stability, strengthening the role of the private sector in achieving inclusive and sustainable growth and development.<\/p>\n
Other areas that are to be looked at during the forum are financial markets and long term growth, key issues in economic management, unlocking the potential for long term economic development and developing an effective communication strategy.<\/p>\n
By:\u00a0 Vivian Kai Mensah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n
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President John Mahama has dismissed reports that government has taken a concrete decision to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout in the midst of current economic challenges facing the country. According to the President he is yet to decide on whether Ghana should make that move. President Mahama who made this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":6744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,21,4],"class_list":["post-18331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-psychiatric","tag-st-augustines-college"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}