Bortianor-Ngleshie Amanfro MP, Sylvester Tetteh, has said the government has never said that it will not be going into an International Monetary (IMF) programme.
According to him, Ghana is a member of the IMF and can choose to go into an IMF programme as and when needed.
In a Good Morning Ghana interview, the MP (Member of Parliament) said that no government official, including President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, or any of his senior appointees, has ever said that Ghana will not go into an IMF programme.
“Ghana is a member of the IMF. I don’t know how somebody will say that Ghana should stop doing business with the IMF… The time suggests what we will do. Perhaps three or four years ago, it would have made no sense to say you are going to the IMF for a program, but today, bigger economies are coming together to find a solution to the peculiar programme.
“I have not seen or had any official position that we are going to the IMF, but I have also not heard that Ghana will never go to the IMF … At this juncture if it turns out the we need a particular programme or a particular intervention, I have not heard the president, the finance minister or any senior minister rule out the possibility of doing business with the IMF,” he said.
The MP indicated that the country may have to go to the IMF because the revenue being expected from the Electronic Transfer Level is way below the set target.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, in May 2022, reiterated the government’s stance on not returning to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a financial bailout.
According to him, the government is committed to not returning to the IMF because it has put interventions and policies in place to ensure sufficient macroeconomic gains for the local economy to bounce back on track.
Ken Ofori-Atta speaking at a press conference in Accra on Thursday, May 12, indicated that the IMF is aware that the Ghanaian economy is heading in the right direction.
“We have committed to not going back to the fund (for a bailout) because in terms of the interventions and policy we are right there, the fund (IMF) knows that we are completely in the right direction,” he said.
He added that Ghana will only go to the fund for validation of “our programmes that we have put in place and then, in my view, supporting us to find alternative ways of financing or re-financing our debt, reprofiling it.”
Watch the MP’s statement on the IMF below: