IMF bailout will worsen Ghana’s economic crisis – Kwasi Pratt

Pratt bemoans government’s decision to go to the IMF

300,000 workers lost their jobs due to an IMF bailout, Pratt

Ghana’s currency has depreciated by over 38,000%, Pratt alleges

Veteran journalist, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, has bemoaned the government’s decision to go for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout.

He indicated that Ghana has previously

Read full articlegone into several IMF programmes but that did not result in a drastic change to the country’s economy.

In a TV 3 interview monitored by GhanaWeb, Pratt added that what Ghana needs is a restructuring of its economy and not an IMF programme.

“We have gone to the IMF many times, it didn’t change our destiny, it didn’t our situation. The more we went to the IMF the more problems we had.

“We were with the IMF in 1993 (for the Economic Recovery Programme and later the Structural Adjustment Programme). The result was that there was massive privatisation of state enterprises and retrenchment of labour which led to the loss of 300,000 jobs workers … and increased poverty.

“… since the very first time we went to the IMF and now the national currency has devalued by more than 38,000 percent - that is not the way to go. What is happening is a collapse of a system, (it) is a failure of the new liberal system and the way out is the fundamental restructuring of the national economy, not (a) bailout,” he said.

On Friday, July 1, 2022, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo ordered the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, to commence official engagements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In a statement signed by the Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the finance minister was instructed by the president to seek the IMF’s support for an economic programme put together by the government of Ghana.

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