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Ghana could go back to IMF in the short-term according to a former finance minister, Seth Terkper

A former Finance Minister, Seth Terkper, says there is a possibility of Ghana running back to the International Monetary Fund for assistance in the short term.

Ghana’s former Finance Minister, Seth Terkper

Speaking on Accra-based Mr Terkper said Ghana could go back to the IMF if the current government fails to maintain fiscal discipline in the lead-up to the 2020 elections and also does not honour its debt obligations.

“We could, if what some of us are saying, like offsets of arrears and the rest and others are real, and I hope that there is a clarification that they are not real, then all of us can [relax] but if we continue despite the additional oil revenues and the others, we could be there.”

He added that if “despite the additional oil revenues we are not paying down debts and others, we could be forced there because what forces you into the Fund? Sometimes it is not your willingness to go but because going to the market has become tough.”

Ghana exited the IMF bailout programme in April 2019. This was after an initial three-year arrangement which was approved on April 3, 2015, was extended for an additional year on August 30, 2017. Ghana got US$925.9 million from the IMF during the four-year programme.

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When the programme ended, President Akufo-Addo said sixteenth IMF bailout was going to be the last one for the country.

Addressing the World Bank Vice-President for Africa, Dr Hafez Ghanem at the Jubilee House when he paid a courtesy call on him, Nana Akufo-Addo said “we have had sixteen bailouts programmes with the IMF since independence. It doesn’t make sense, largely because the discipline that we should have in the management of our public expenditure and the management of our public finances has not been there.”

“We think that we can do it. We are thirty million people here with considerable resources in their natural form, and if we have the policy framework and the policy options that we take are once that favour this process, we are looking at being within a decade, able to fashion a new self-sustaining economy, this is the economy we want to call the “Ghana Beyond Aid”, the President added.

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