FTSE 100 +0.64%
Pound/Dollar -0.32%
Brent Crude Oil +0.06%
Cocoa +0.06%
Euro/Dollar -0.05%

Ghanaian Politics

Going to the IMF at this point is way to go – Asiedu Nketia tells gov’t

By : cd on 07 Feb 2022, 09:24     |     Source: 3news.com

IMF

General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has suggested to the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for support.

Mr Asiedu Nketia noted that the IMF is capable and willing to support Ghana to deal with its fiscal challenges but with conditionalities.

The Akufo-Addo administration, he said, is scared of the conditionalities that will check, in his view, the reckless spending of the administration.

Speaking on the New Day show on T3V with Johnnie Hughes on Monday February 7, he recounted the benefit that Ghana derived when the NDC administration went to the Bretton Woods institution for support.

The NDC went to the IMF due to the difficulties they faced as a result of the implementation of policies the Kufuor administration bequeathed to them.

“In the last quarter of his administration he announced single spine. Immediately NDC took over in 2019 all the workers said if Kufuor had been in power he would have implemented single

“If the first four years was very turbulent for us so we went through all those difficulties and we tried to implement the single spine. Even the World Bank said it may not be a good thing but we did. The result was that at the end, we ended up having closer to 70 per cent of the nation’s revenue going into wage’s and salaries.

“This was not sustainable so we said we must do something about. We called forum at Senchi and opened the books…we did this and eventually we went to IMF and it helped us manage so we went to the 2026 under the IMF programme.”

He further indicated that the NDC warned the Akufo-Addo administration against the recurrent expenditure because it was going to balloon the debt situation.

“We kept waring that increase in recurrent expenditure will lead to borrowing that we will not be able to pay the interest of the loan,” he said.

Asked whether President Akufo-Addo should go to the IMF, he answered “I think it is something that they have to consider. if it is the only that will take us out of this problem then the earlier the better.”