Ghana won’t need IMF bailout if government deals with corruption - Asah Asante

A senior lecturer at the University Ghana Political Science Department, Dr. Kwame Asah Asante has said that the country will be able to forgo the IMF bailout and its conditions if the government manages corruption well.

Ghana officially contacted the International Monetary Fund to seek financial support. The external creditors provided Ghana with a certain criterion the country must meet to secure a possible $3 billion bailout.

The government introduced the Domestic Debt Exchange Program (DDEP) to restructure debt as part of the steps to reach board-level approval with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a $3 billion facility to restore macroeconomic stability in the country.

The government targeted 80% participation in the program to help restructure 137.3 billion Ghana cedis in bonds on the domestic market to bring its total debt, which stands at about 575.5 billion Ghana cedis to sustainable levels.

Speaking on Morning Starr the Political Scientist said that the government’s mismanagement of corruption is the reason we need to accept all these conditionalities from IMF for a possible bailout.

“We are so excited that IMF is going to give us close to 3 billion for starters and all that. But if we manage corruption very well, I’m afraid we will not need that money with its attendant problems and conditions. Let’s look at the issue of waste and a lot of information are available within the auditor general’s report year by year. How far have we come, and how far have we learned from them to continue to see these things in our books? It is unfortunate.

“If you look at issue of waste, in terms of projects we pursue. Projects that have little or no benefit for society and then we are in there. We undertake projects without records of stakeholder engagement, and when people raise their voices those projects become abandoned and we adjust to devising such projects. We have seen issues of misapplication of state resources. In the sense that the constitution makes it mandatory for all government that when you inherit power, any project that is done using state money you will continue,” Dr. Asante explained.

He continued; “But there are buildings today that are languishing in the bush and that we don’t seem to care about it. we forget that state money was put into such resources. Look at the way we execute contracts in this country as if there is no supervisor of contracts that the state has awarded. We do it anyhow and people benefit from that through poor supervision and poor execution of state projects. What is more, is that we see even some is that we see of these contracts ending up in judgement debt.”