Economist, Professor Godfred Bopkin, has called on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to set up a team with better understanding of drawing up Ghana’s possible bailout programme from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
He opined that the team must have the requisite knowledge in designing the economic support programme which is aimed at restoring macroeconomic stability and safeguarding debt sustainability.
Speaking in an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, Professor Godfred Bopkin suggested, “it may be helpful for the President to set up a team specifically to design this programme that can be presented to the fund as quickly as possible.”
“As it stands now, we need a team that really can relate to the IMF at that level,” Prof. Bokpin added.
On July 1, 2022, government made a decision to engage the International Monetary Fund for a financial bailout.
Subsequently, a team from the IMF arrived in the country from July 6-13 and engaged Ghanaian authorities for a possible economic support programme
Ghana is said to be targeting an amount of $3 billion over a three-year period from the IMF once an agreement on a programme is reached.
The new amount requested as a loan was double the government’s initial target of $1.5 billion.
Meanwhile, amid the current economic downturn in the country, international ratings agency, Fitch downgraded Ghana’s Long-Term Foreign-Currency (LTFC) Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘CCC’ from ‘B-'.
In a report sighted by GhanaWeb on August 10, it noted that the downgrade reflects the deterioration of Ghana's public finances which has contributed to a prolonged lack of access to Eurobond markets.
The agency added that this led to a significant decline in external liquidity.
In addition to the downgrade, Ghana’s inflation rate for July this year reached an all-time high of 31.7 percent, according to the Ghana Statistical Service.
Prof. Godfred Alufar Bokpin, Economist and Finance lecturer at UGBS