ACCRA, Nov 25 (Reuters) - The government of Ghana said at this week's biennial meeting with aid donors that it would not seek an external debt reduction under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative.
``We informed the meeting of our decision not to avail ourselves of the HIPC initiative,'' Finance Minister Kwame Peprah told a news conference late on Wednesday after the two-day meeting had ended.
``We did that having considered all the issues involving how we are going to assess it, when it was going to be available and also how it was going to affect access of our private sector to foreign capital,'' he added.
He denied firmly that the government had taken the decision under pressure from certain aid donors.
Diplomatic sources have said that Japan had made the disbursement of some $50 million in programme aid for 1999 conditional on Ghana not being part of the HIPC initiative.
Some donor countries complain they do not have the resources to make a big write-down in debt as well as give fresh aid.
Girma Begashaw, resident representative in Accra for the International Monetary Fund, said the decision follows Ghana's traditional preference not to seek debt relief, which can have a negative impact on a country's debt rating.
``Before HIPC there were many other mechanisms for debt relief. Ghana has consistently decided not to use debt relief. For me it is not a surprise. It is in the tradition of their past decisions,'' Begashaw said.
