According to Mr. Gordon Edudzi Temaklo, a lawyer, Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has failed in his role as the head of the Economic Management (EMT).
The Vice President and Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, in Mr. Tameklo’s viewpoint, are the faces of the current economic crisis the nation is experiencing.
He asserted that these two individuals shouldn’t participate in the interaction with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) because they had failed.
Speaking on the New Day show with Johnnie Hughes on TV3 on Monday, August 15, Mr. Tameklo, a member of the major opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), advised that the President replace Dr. Bawuamia with Dr. Paul Acquah, a former governor of the Bank of Ghana who also happened to be Dr. Bawuamia’s boss at the central bank while he was a Deputy Governor, on the team that is negotiating with the Fund.
“The poster boys of this mess are Ken Ofori-Atta and Bawumia,”Edudzi said. “The very thing Bawumia criticized the NDC for, they are doing worse, in fact they have done a lot of terrible things. On the NPP stock, Bawumia and Ofori-Atta are not the best, we have the former BoG Governor Paul Acquah,” Mr Tameklo added.
Speaking on the same show, Government Spokesperson on Governance and Security Palgrave Boakye-Danquah said the government is optimistic that the IMF deal will happen by end of this year or early next year. “By the end of the year or early 2023, we should have positive feedback from the IMF,” he said.
He added “We welcome all ideas, we are confident that the programmes that we have put in place will yield results.” Fitch ratings recently said it strongly believes Ghana’s deal with the IMF is likely to happen within the next six months.
Fitch estimated that a programme could disburse as much as USD3 billion and unlock budget support from other multilateral lenders. “In July 2022, the authorities reversed a long-standing position against seeking IMF support.
Fitch believes that a deal with the IMF is likely within the next six months. We estimate that a programme could disburse as much as USD3 billion and unlock budget support from other multilateral lenders.
“However, the timing of such a deal is uncertain and would be dependent on the government’s ability to present a credible fiscal reform plan in line with increasing government revenue and improving debt affordability metrics.
“The most recent IMF debt sustainability analysis, conducted in 2021, found Ghana at a high risk of debt distress and vulnerable to shocks from market access and high debt servicing costs,” Fitch said while announcing a downgrade of Ghana’s economy to ‘CCC’ from ‘B-‘ on Wednesday August 10, 2022.
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