Gov’t can manage economy without IMF – Yofi Grant

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Center (GIPC), Yofi Grant, has rejected claims that Ghana’s economy will be in shambles without the support of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

According to him, the Nana Akufo-Addo government is bent on revamping the Ghanaian economy with or without such external support.

Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Thursday, a day after the Finance Minister presented the 2018 budget to Parliament; the GIPC boss said they will do everything possible to boost Ghana’s economy.

“With or without the IMF, I can confidently and comfortably say that here is a government and a Ministry of Finance which says with or without the IMF we are going to do the right things to put the economy on a trajectory of sustainable and irreversible growth. That is going to be challenging, and we will do it. That is the track where we are going,” he added.

Background

Despite its criticism of Ghana’s three year programme with IMF while in opposition, the NPP government allowed an extension of the programme for a year.

Per the new agreement, the programme will now end in April 2019, and Ghana will receive an additional 94 million dollars disbursement.

A Deputy Minister of Finance, Kwaku Kwarteng, had earlier disclosed that they accepted the extension under duress.

“…The IMF has been around for two years and they the IMF are now telling us that the programme has underperformed, and so we should now extend it. We didn’t think we needed that. So when we expressed that view to them… what we didn’t anticipate was the response we subsequently got from the IMF. It was that if we do not extend, then there is no way we were going to achieve the objectives of the programme so they will end the programme today,” he said.

Government has since been lambasted for agreeing to the extension especially after they criticized the Mahama government for the programme, which led to a freeze on wholesale public sector recruitment, among other things.

Some analysts say the NPP’s audacious social intervention programmes will adversely be affected because the IMF frowns on such initiatives.

NPP gov’t defies IMF

Also speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, editor of the Financial Post newspaper, Toma Imihere, said government has defied some of the IMF’s directives.

“The government has decided to defy the IMF and adopt a fiscal consolidation pace which is actually slower than what the IMF has been insisting on in order to be able to create a certain level of growth. The IMF attitude has been just to fast-track the fiscal consolidation and get back on an even key. This government has decided that if you try to do that, by the time you’ve achieved your stability, you don’t have any industry or economy left. And I’m happy that the government has taken that decision.”