The Civil and Local Government Staff Association (CLOGSAG) has expressed its support for the decision by the government to go to the International Monetary Fund(IMF).
Speaking about the move by the government to go to the IMF for support, Executive Secretary of CLOGSAG, Mr Isaac Bampoe Addo, stated that this will not be the first time Ghana will be seeking assistance from the IMF.
“In the first place, we are civil servants, we are supposed to support government policies. We want to say that we support the policy to go back to the IMF. We know the terrain, so it is no issue, we know how to survive it, we know how to get out of it so we don’t see any problem with it.”
Isaac Bampoe Addo
The Executive Secretary indicated that there is nothing wrong with seeking help from IMF because Ghana has been there before and got out. “So, this one too we will get out.”
Improve On Domestic Revenue Generation
Mr. Bampoe further suggested to government to improve on domestic revenue generation as a way of dealing with the difficulties facing the economy.
Isaac Bampoe Addo said government will continue to have problems if it does not scale up revenue mobilization domestically.
“Of course they are going to put in some conditionalities but the bottom line is this, once you are having issues with your internal revenue generation , once you don’t improve that, we will always have these problems.
“So, what we will say is that we need to improve our internal revenue generation and that is going to take us out of this because once you are not getting the internal generated revenue then you have these problems. So, you have to come out with polices to improve our revenue generation.”
Isaac Bampoe Addo
His comments followed instructions from the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, to commence formal engagements with the IMF inviting the Fund to support an economic programme put together by the Government of Ghana.
This followed a telephone conversation between the President and the IMF Managing Director, Miss Kristalina Georgieva, conveying Ghana’s decision to engage with the Fund.
This, has however, not been received well by the public as the move is being purported to be one that will not end well. Many stakeholders have also spoken against it and notable amongst them is the Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, who stated that if government doesn’t want its IMF crisis communication strategy to backfire as it is appearing, it should first stop collecting the unconstitutional and obnoxious E-Levy.
The North Tongu MP also asked government to apologize to Ghanaians for the economic mismanagement and the blatant falsehood that they won’t seek an IMF bailout.
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