{"id":139048,"date":"2015-07-30T07:47:21","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T07:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=139048"},"modified":"2015-10-20T11:02:17","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T11:02:17","slug":"2016-election-year-ghana-will-struggle-to-stay-within-budget-imf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2015\/07\/2016-election-year-ghana-will-struggle-to-stay-within-budget-imf\/","title":{"rendered":"2016 election year: Ghana will struggle to stay within budget &#8211; IMF"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde has admitted that that the real test for Ghana\u2019s commitment to the current bailout programme would be 2016\u00a0which is the election year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">She said this in an online press briefing on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;qZnnPFpKx87gziheRHEz7ETaemMJjKE6&#8243;]According to her, just like other country across the world, election years are always difficult for countries under any programme because they struggle to meet their targets.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201c&#8230;Whether it\u2019s Ghana or any other country in the world, election years are always difficult for countries under program because they\u2019re targets, because there are sometimes hard decisions to be made. Election years are not very conducive to those decisions, which is why for the Ghana&#8217;s situation a lot of the fiscal adjustment was frontloaded in 2015.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The IMF was <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #666699;\" href=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/2015\/06\/30\/ghana-meets-bailout-performance-criteria-imf\/\" target=\"_blank\">impressed with Ghana\u2019s commitment<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to the current bailout programme after their first assessment of the country\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Christine Lagard said because the fund anticipated the difficulties Ghana would encounter during the election year, a lot of what she called front-loaded fiscal adjustment have been done for 2015.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">She concluded that a lot of the hard decisions have been taken, and hopefully, 2016 would be neutral.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cSo many of the hard decisions have already been taken, which should hopefully make 2016 not a neutral year, but a year when the hard decisions are at a lower level. So I\u2019m very hopeful that Ghana continues to deliver and continues to restore the economic stability that it had and is sensible about its borrowing capacity,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Government and economist have always blamed the country\u2019s widening fiscal deficit, to<span style=\"color: #666699;\"> <strong><a style=\"color: #666699;\" href=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/2015\/03\/11\/i-have-the-dead-goat-syndrome-mahama-warns-labour\/\" target=\"_blank\">overspending during election years<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, a situation the bailout programme is expected to curtail.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In 2012 which was an election year, the country&#8217;s budget deficit reached about 12% of GDP and dropped to about 10.8% the following year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cFiscal consolidation is on track as of end-April, even excluding the payment of dividend by Bank of Ghana (about 0.4 percent of GDP) in March,&#8221; the IMF said after scrutinising government&#8217;s performance on the 2015 bailout programme.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Finance Minister, Seth Terkper in his midyear budget review statement in Parliament, disclosed that the current debt stock of the country stood at GHc90 billion cedis, representing 67.53 per cent of GDP.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8211;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">By: Nana Boakye-Yiadom\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde has admitted that that the real test for Ghana\u2019s commitment to the current bailout programme would be 2016\u00a0which is the election year. She said this in an online press briefing on Wednesday. [contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;qZnnPFpKx87gziheRHEz7ETaemMJjKE6&#8243;]According to her, just like other country across the world, election [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":15848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[38,4],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>2016 election year: Ghana will struggle to stay within budget - IMF - Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2015\/07\/2016-election-year-ghana-will-struggle-to-stay-within-budget-imf\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2016 election year: Ghana will struggle to stay within budget - IMF - Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde has admitted that that the real test for Ghana\u2019s commitment to the current bailout programme would be 2016\u00a0which is the election year. She said this in an online press briefing on Wednesday. [contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;qZnnPFpKx87gziheRHEz7ETaemMJjKE6&#8243;]According to her, just like other country across the world, election [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2015\/07\/2016-election-year-ghana-will-struggle-to-stay-within-budget-imf\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. 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