Dr. Leandro Medina, Resident Representative of the International Monetary Fund, has disclosed that the IMF will help the government improve transparency and governance as part of Ghana’s IMF program.
The government, as stated by Dr. Medina, has already begun steps to resolve governance and transparency challenges, adding that “the IMF would provide full support in that regard.“
“In terms of governance and transparency, we really take it seriously, there is a lot in the staff report, in the programme document you will see there are different dimensions that we’ll look into and we really support the effort of authorities again trying to make steps to address governance issues and to increase transparency.”
Dr. Leandro Medina
Dr. Medina highlighted one of the efforts taken to address government transparency challenges, stating that the government has ordered a corruption assessment, of which the results will be added to the country’s anti-corruption action plan.
“The Ghanaian authorities have taking quite some steps to deal with the governance issue and to improve transparency. The authorities have requested the IMF technical assistance to conduct governance corruption diagnostic assessment which will be done with the support of the IMF and the result will be an input for the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan, NACAP. This is a very important dimension of improvement in governance by the authorities.”
Dr. Leandro Medina
Ghana Expected To Embark On Significant And Immediate Fiscal Consolidation
More so, Dr. Leandro Medina revealed that IMF is expecting Ghana to undertake a large and front loading fiscal consolidation exercise, within the three years of the country’s subscription to the IMF.
According to him, this will be done through revenue mobilization and making government expenditure more efficient.
Ghana has recently received Executive Board approval from the IMF for its $3billion bailout – following the country’s ejection from the international capital market, after reaching unsustainable debt levels.
Mr. Medina stated that austerity measures to be enforced as part of the fiscal consolidation exercise is expected to have a significant impact on Ghanaians, thus, the need for more social protection programmes to shield the most vulnerable in society.
“But of course this will be done while protecting the vulnerable, protecting the poor because ensuring social protections is one of the key aspects of the programme. And if I may give you two examples, two key examples of what is being done by your authorities in their economic programme is first in the 2023 budget, the benefit under the LEAP are being doubled and also the school feeding programme is being adjusted to counteract the effect of the inflation. But these are just a few examples of what the programme is doing in this aspect.”
Dr. Leandro Medina
Ghana received the first tranche of $600 million of the IMF bailout on May 19. The second tranche of disbursement would be expected by December 2023. This is however subject to meeting some conditions under the programme.
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