How can IMF’s MD forget its own gloomy data on Ghana – Isaac Adongo

The member of parliament for the Bolgatanga Central constituency, Isaac Adongo, has queried the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund over statements she made about Ghana’s economic situation.

According to him, the Fund had in times past released data that depicted the nature of Ghana’s economy and its ballooning debt.

Commenting on Former President

Read full articleMahama's post which debunked claims that the country's woes have been due to exogenous factors, Adongo questioned how the IMF boss could come to such conclusions.

“Fortunately, the IMF has issued several official Management Board and Staff reports on Ghana including its mandatory annual surveillance reports called Article IV Consultations which showed a country in a mess since 2018 and got worse in 2019.

“IMF reported in its published RCF agreement that we were doing a debt service of 91% of revenue, 7.7% deficit, 4.7% negative primary, a balance which means we were borrowing a whopping 4.7% of GDP to service debt, had zero cash buffers entering into 2020 and had been at a high risk of debt distress for 3 consecutive years,” he wrote in a comment under John Mahama’s Facebook post on September 8, 2022.

Per the data he stated, he continued to ask: “How can the MD of IMF forget its own gloomy data on Ghana and seek to speak to a non-existent narrative? Probably, the visit of the finance minister to her office wiped off all the pages of all the IMF data on Ghana and replaced them with a new storyline."

He added that even though Ghana appreciates the assistance from the fund, “don't further add to a worsening governance regime based on lies, narrative fostering and credibility crisis.”

Kristalina Georgieva said on September 5, 2022, after a meeting with Ghana’s President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that Ghana’s economic hardships have been largely caused by exogenous factors.

“Like everybody on this planet, Ghana has been hurt by exogenous shocks, first the pandemic, then Russia’s war in Ukraine, and we need to realize that Ghana’s challenge is not because of bad policies, but the combination of external shocks,” the IMF boss noted.

SSD/FNOQ