Debt exchange programme cannot be scrapped, it's a necessity - Ofori-Atta

The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has stated that the debt exchange programme is necessary for fixing Ghana’s ailing economy.

According to him, scrapping the programme is not an option.

In a myjoyonoline.com report, the minister said “we have a situation where our debt exchange is necessary… we have a situation where we have come out of certain formulations and we have gone ahead to discuss or the financial institutions that way to mitigate that. I think we’ve done that successfully.”

“In the same way, we sat with the Union pensions, and I think we are making great progress in what we do for them. In the same way in which we are looking at individual bondholders to see how we can tweak this. Would we lose a bit of what we have? I think all of us are going to. But we have to make sure that what we eventually come up with will create sustainability,” he explained.

The debt exchange programme has come under intense resistance as government is being forced to extend the deadline for the invitation to sign on to the programme by bondholders.

Individual bondholders have petitioned the finance minister to exclude them from the debt exchange programme as this will lead to the depletion of their investments.

However, the resistance has led to the extension of the deadline to January 31, 2023.

SSD/FNOQ