By Elorm Desewu
Ghana will in December receive a total of US$360 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the board is set to meet and approve the disbursement which is in line with Ghana passing the third review under the fund programme.
This amount would support the country’s balance of payment as well as stem the speed depreciation of the Ghana Cedi.
“Once the review is completed by the IMF’s executive board, Ghana would have access to about $360 million in terms of disbursement”, the Director of Communications at the IMF Julie Kozack disclosed at news conference in Washington DC USA.
“We are working, our staff are working toward a board meeting in early December and will provide additional details on the precise date when we have them”, she added.
Describing the programme performance as encouraging, Ms. Kozack said Ghana has followed the requirements needed for the country’s debt restructuring.
“What I can say in addition is that the programme performance has been good. There has been in particular remarkable progress on debt restructuring”.
She pointed out that some macroeconomic projections have been achieved under the programme, indicating some level of recovery.
“Economic growth in the first half of 2024 exceeded our expectations, exceeded our projections. Inflation has declined and the fiscal and external positions have shown marked improvement”, she said.
She cautioned against decisions that may cause slippages in the future.
“Looking ahead, what will be important for Ghana will be continued implementation of the policy and reform agendas, especially given the difficult situation that many countries in the region and globally face. And it remains essential to fully restore macroeconomic stability and debt sustainability”.
“We will, of course, have further updates on Ghana when we release the staff report, when we publish the staff report after the board meeting”, she added.
On October 4th, the IMF staff and government reached a staff level agreement on economic policies and reforms for the third review of the ECF arrangement.
The disbursement by the IMF Board in December 2024 will bring the total funds received since Ghana signed up for the IMF programme to $1.92 billion.
The board meeting in December is coming after Ghana passed most of the benchmarks set under the third review by the IMF programme.
The IMF staff at the end of the third review assessment indicated that all the end-June 2024 quantitative targets were met, and progress on key structural reforms has continued notwithstanding delays in a few areas
“The economic growth in the first half of 2024 was much higher than initially envisaged primarily fueled by mining, construction, and information and communication activity, with a broadening of the sources of growth across sectors during the second quarter as inflation continued to decline” The IMF Staff said.
