The financial burden of the ordinary Ghanaian may not get better anytime soon. As such, Ghanaians are being urged to prepare themselves for the tumultuous times that lay ahead. This is because, while the government of Ghana has reached out to the IMF to begin formal talks and open itself up to external support, the conditions of the Bretton Woods organisation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would be brutal and may cause pain to the Ghanaian.
The expected situation is a direct consequence of the government’s defiance and earlier intransigent stance on the return to the IMF. Had the government given in earlier and sought support, the situation may not have been as dire as it is now.
“Many of us would have wished that we had gone out sooner rather than later. It now looks like we have been carried there by a stretcher; in an ambulance with oxygen on us. The reception at the IMF is going to be a dire one. The treatment process is going to be a very difficult one. We are definitely going to go into very serious economic surgery. The pain to us as a people and to the economy is going to be quite difficult to bear.”
“If you look at all the countries that have gone to the IMF, Ghana seems to be the worst of them in terms of our fundamentals; looking at inflation, our exchange rate depreciation. We have gotten here in a rather bad state.”
This is according to Development Economist, Dr. Michael Adongo Ayamga. He said this when he spoke on the Day Break Upper East Show on A1 Radio, Monday, July 4, 2022.
Dr. Adongo Ayamga explained that Ghana’s economic conditions when it went to the IMF in 2015 were better than the current situation.
“If you look at inflation, it is almost double the last time we went. If you look at how we went there in 2015 and how we went there now, it is most likely we are going to have double the pain we had under the John Mahama IMF package; and that was not even easy.”
In Dr. Adongo Ayamga’s opinion, “the best time to have gone to the IMF was 2019, 2020; last 2021, we should have arrived there.”
Meanwhile, Dominic Anarigide, Economist and Financial Policy Analyst has explained that the government’s rather shocking and remarkable u-turn towards the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may have already begun giving the country slight benefits already.
This is because, investors have begun regaining confidence in bonds issued by the government, a situation that was almost hopeless just a few weeks ago.
Mr. Anarigide explained that there is a direct relationship between the government’s communication to go back to the IMF and the slight boost in confidence in the country’s economy.
He said this when he spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show today, Monday, July 4, 2022.
“We just picked signals on Saturday that our bonds are beginning to show some positives. Investors are beginning to show interest in our bonds. Our bonds were almost given for nothing. They achieved the ridiculous title of junk bonds. The return to the IMF is the reason, nothing else.”
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
