President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has called on Ghana’s allies to weigh in with words of support at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the $3 billion extended credit facility (ECF) being sought by the country to be approved.
Ghana has already reached a staff level agreement (SLA) with the Fund but approval is yet to be given by the Executive Board of the Fund.
The President expressed hope that the approval will come by the end of this month.
President Akufo-Addo expressed this hope while addressing members of the diplomatic corps at the 2023 Presentation of Diplomatic Greetings at Peduase Lodge in the Eastern Region on Tuesday, February 28.
He pointed out that already Ghana has had the tacit support of the so-called Paris Club.
“Just as we manged to achieve a staff level agreement with the Fund in record time in December last year whose terms were systematically fulfilling including the difficult but ultimately highly successful process of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme, I am confident that with the cooperation we have received from the members of the Paris Club and the People’s Republic of China, which had sent a delegation from China’s EXIM Bank to Accra over the weekend to meet with officials of the Ministry of Finance, we shall be able to go to the Board of the Fund to conclude finally the agreement by the end of March,” he said.
“This will set the stage for the strong recovery of Ghana’s economy. Needless to say, we will hope that all Ghana’s friends will weigh in with words of support at the Fund.”
President Akufo-Addo conceded that the country’s balance of payment in 2022 was thrown out of gear as a result of many factors including the Russia-Ukraine war, plunging the country into “considerable difficulties”.
But he indicated that the move to IMF was for a “short term” to repair the country’s public finances.