The Minority in Parliament has expressed its worry at the recent review carried out by the mission team of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
According to the Minority’s Ranking Member on the Finance Committee of Parliament, Isaac Adongo, the country’s current economic situation is worse than the previous year.
That runs contrary to the IMF’s position at the review joint press conference with the Finance Minister.
“In the first place, the data is quite clear that the situation is worse today than it was last year. And yet we would want to believe that last year was the worse period. That after the IMF in 2023, it will get better than last year but the data suggest otherwise.”
Isaac Adongo
This was in reaction to the outcome of the second review led by IMF’s Chief of Mission, Stéphane Roudet.
Mr Roudet had told journalists at a joint press conference with the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, in Accra that there appears to be a turnaround of the Ghanaian economy much to the surprise of the Fund.
“We also have the adjustment and fiscal position the Minister mentioned the numbers for June as much better than the target.
“The external position, in general, is stronger, the currency has become much less volatile than what Ghana experienced at the end of last year when it was a very challenging situation. So, clearly, there is a turnaround, there is an improvement, and signs of macroeconomic stability are now emerging.”
IMF
But, the Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central, Mr Adongo challenged this and emphasized that there is no turnaround of the economy. He, thus, tagged the current situation as a “lobbyist activity”.
“It has become necessary because it does appear to me that this IMF program is not a program that is targeted at doing the hard work to help the people of Ghana get out of the difficulty that we are in.
“But it is one that for me appears to be more of a lobbyist activity, treated with kids’ gloves and a child who is not willing to take the bitter pill to heal faster and all that has been going on is playing with the emotions and the livelihoods of Ghanaians and using PR to foster that.”
Isaac Adongo
IMF Compared “Mangoes” With “Pineapples”
According to Mr. Adongo, the IMF team compared mangoes with pineapples instead of mangoes to mangoes or pineapples to pineapples.
“What they have sought to do is to compare mangoes with pineapples. You can’t take the end-year inflation of 2022 and compare it with any of the inflation other than December 2023. That is how you compare apples to apples.”
Isaac Adongo
He predicted that inflation will soar in December, hence it is too early for any such conclusions as made by the IMF to be made.
“The inflation we are seeing today has different seasonal and cyclical pressures compared to that of December. In December, we all know the demand pressures, we know Christmas comes, and there is a lot of pressure on the Cedi because people are looking for foreign currency to stock for Christmas and all that. The inflation of now has not experienced that so you can’t compare that to the inflation that would be attained in December.”
Isaac Adongo
“We expected that at this review, we would have seen some modicum of improvement”, Mr. Adongo added.
The joint press conference was to address the next line of action for Ghana’s second tranche of the bailout package.
The IMF Mission team have been in the country engaging in a review of the country’s first tranche of the package which was $600 million.
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