{"id":60037,"date":"2014-10-27T20:37:23","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T20:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=60037"},"modified":"2014-10-27T20:37:23","modified_gmt":"2014-10-27T20:37:23","slug":"ghanas-financial-challenges-will-worsen-kwaku-kwarteng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=60037","title":{"rendered":"Ghana’s financial challenges will worsen – Kwaku Kwarteng"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Member of the Finance Committee of Parliament, Kwaku Kwarteng is predicting Ghana\u2019s financial challenges will worsen.<\/p>\n

He was responding to the Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mornah Quartey\u2019s assertions that \u00a0the recent downgrade of Ghana\u2019s credit rating by Standard and Poor\u2019s (S&P) is purely \u201cspeculative.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Ghana\u2019s credit rating was downgraded further into \u201cjunk\u201d territory by \u00a0S&P<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/a>on concerns that access to financing will continue to be a struggle even if the Ghana enters adopts an International Monetary Fund programme.<\/p>\n

S &P highlighted that despite a successful international bond issue earlier, the country has gross external financing needs of 137 per cent of current account receipts and reserves next year, and therefore relegated Ghana one notch to B-, six levels below investment grade today.<\/p>\n

[contextly_sidebar id=”iQ5ny5g6Ht1fvPGB2m8HpSlbglbkQOw4″]But Mornah Quartey downplayed S&P’s report, saying\u00a0\u201cThe short term outlook was stable and they didn\u2019t downgrade us on that. We kept our rating and that was fine and that is why we have our challenges so I\u2019m glad that, that did not change.”<\/p>\n

Speaking on Eyewitness News <\/strong>however\u00a0, Mr. Kwarteng said S&P’s rating was a true reflection of the situation on the ground.<\/p>\n

Mr. Kwarteng who is also the Member of Parliament for the Obuasi West Constituency said, \u201cthere is every indication that our fiscals will not be as we are pretending it will be. I think that it will be worse than that. The international observers are beginning to say that we don\u2019t trust this administration to do the right things in order to check the fiscals.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also chided government for its decision to constantly seek support from international donors, saying, \u201cWe have been borrowing from the international capital markets, we\u2019ve borrowed domestically, we just took 45 million euros for maintenance of roads…\u201d<\/p>\n

On \u00a0the IMF programme, Mr. Kwarteng said government has failed to prepare Ghanaians to \u201cface some of the territories they will need to implement to make the programme a successful one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we should take the concerns that have been expressed by the agencies on board. We really have not demonstrated that we are in a position to implement some of the commitment we have made to the IMF right now,\u201d Kwaku Kwarteng added.<\/p>\n

Officials from the IMF are expected back in Ghana in November<\/strong> <\/span><\/a>to begin the third round of talks for a bailout programme.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By: Marian Efe Ansah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Member of the Finance Committee of Parliament, Kwaku Kwarteng is predicting Ghana\u2019s financial challenges will worsen. He was responding to the Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mornah Quartey\u2019s assertions that \u00a0the recent downgrade of Ghana\u2019s credit rating by Standard and Poor\u2019s (S&P) is purely \u201cspeculative.\u201d Ghana\u2019s credit rating was downgraded further into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":21005,"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":[43,38,4],"class_list":["post-60037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-st-augustines-college"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60037","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=60037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}