Ghana’s Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has announced that the West African country is committed to managing its debt without assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The minister made the declaration at a press conference in Accra on Thursday. He also expressed confidence that government measures were moving the country in the right direction.
“We have committed to not going back to the fund because… the fund knows we are [moving] in the right direction,” Ofori-Atta said.
“It’s about validating the program we have in place and finding other ways of handling our debt.”
The minister’s firm stand comes in the wake of other African countries like Zambia, Somalia, and the Benin Republic struggling with their monetary and capital positions and hanging on to international organizations like the International Monetary Fund to way out of the mess.
Ghana’s public debt which was at about 77% of its gross domestic product at the end of 2021 drove the country into crisis.
The government under President Nana Akufo-Addo has put measures aimed at generating more revenue to strengthen the economy of the West African country.
The controversial electronic levy and the cuts in the salaries of public officials are all part of the measures to restore a depreciating local currency and reassure investors.
Ofori-Atta stressed that the country’s priority for now is to solve the country’s domestic debt, which has interest rates that are three to four times higher than foreign debt.
“We need to decide ourselves what structure would be useful to us,” he added.
According to the World Bank, Ghana’s rapid growth was halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the March 2020 lockdown, and a sharp decline in commodity exports. The economy had grown at an average of 7 percent in 2017-19, before experiencing a sharp contraction in the second and third quarters of 2020.