The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has expressed worry over the high expenditure programs being pursued by the government.
According to the fund, even though the Akufo-Addo government promised to save money, the nature of the projects it is embarking on makes it difficult to live up to the promise.
The Fund is, therefore, suggesting that government is not allowed to borrow from the Bank of Ghana, except on an emergency basis.
“The IMF recognizes the recently issued energy bond as public debt and insists that the government classifies it as such.
“The IMF considers it a misplaced priority to be working towards reducing the indebtedness of State Owned Enterprises without first addressing the causal factors responsible for their indebtedness.
“In the view of the IMF, the government should have issued a “Vanilla bond”, not a bond through a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV).
“IMF does not support massive injection of liquidity into the sector to address debt situation. It believes that a better approach would be to release the liquidity in tranches,” the IMF said in a document compiled after a meeting between the IMF mission to Ghana and the Civil Society Platform on the IMF program.
It added: “ The fund is concerned that while on the one hand government has passed the Earmarked Funds capping and Realignment Act, ostensibly to create fiscal space, on the other, the government has chosen to embark on a series of high expenditure projects, a move which appears to defeat of EFCRA”.
The Akufo-Addo government has among other things promised to construct at least, a factory in every district across the country and also provide one million cedis to every constituency for local development.
It has already started the implementation of its major campaign promise of providing free secondary school education for all eligible Ghanaians.
Source: starrfmonline.com
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IMF tell us which country have you helped to develop? Because of $500m you are telling us what to do? Get the FK off our backs.
IMF can come with its recommendations but note that it is the government that is responsible for the welfare of and accountable to the people. Austerity will help but to a limited extent. It is only production and sealing of leakages that can bring real relief to the country and that is exactly what our able government is doing. Cautions from the IMF are welcome to steer us in the right direction, but their programmes are not a panacea to nation building!!!
IMF has make Africans slaves and it is time NPP do away with them because Mahama is using them to destroy NPP good policy.
Don't mind them, Okafo didi. It depends upon how the money is spent. NPP as a Party believes in industrialisation. And wants to move away from raw material export economy to production and thus adding value to our raw products to realize more benifits. It therefore, makes sense to borrow to produce if you lack the capital.
Ma bro, to hell with them? Who has tied the NPP govt's hands to the IMF policies and conditionalities ? They have the liberty to wean itself off the policies as they promised in their "promises packed" campaign ? NPP is the most miserable political party in the country now. The Party jumped from a height it did not measure and also without knowing where it was going land. A gov't which did not heed to advise in the implementation of the free SHS policy and is now saddled with insurmountable problems; all in the name of populism and political expediencies. A whooping amount of Ghc322 million allocated for 58,000 trainee nurses allowances a year which could employ over 5,000 doctors and paramedics every year. "An impotent gov't in the seat of governance.
To hell with this IMFd. We are embarking on massive projects to develop and they are saying what? That is why npp tries to wean Ghana off this western institutions but ndc keeps taking us back to them. So government should not embark on big projects, we should save the money for someone to loot it one day. Abufus3m!