Ghana was on track till COVID, Russia-Ukraine war – IMF boss

Kristalina Georgieva, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has backed government’s position that the current economic crisis is down to the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftershocks as well as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

She said, it was not a secret that exogenous factors had seriously impacted Ghana and other economies around the world, but that her outfit was doing all it could to help the affected countries.

“We recognize that we are in a world in which exogenous shocks more often than before, hit innocent bystanders.

“Ghana has been working towards good policies for quite some time and then COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war hit and that significantly undermined Ghana, and it is not just Ghana, so many countries are standing,” she said during a panel discussion at the 2023 Munich Security Summit over the weekend.

On the part of the IMF, Georgieva said: “So, how we can be faster on our feet to work with countries that are innocent bystanders is a big big challenge and I can tell you our members are really good in helping us meet it.”

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who shared the panel with the IMF boss, lamented the neglect of Africa in the global geopolitical and economic space.

He cited the case of COVID-19 vaccines and the Russia-Ukraine war to buttress his point that when global disruptions kick in, Africa more often than not suffers the brunt.

“We see that from the latest crisis that has overcome humanity, thus COVID-19 and also the war between Russia and Ukraine, we [Ghana] have been left to fend for ourselves.

"Even access to vaccines during the pandemic became a major problem for the African continent, and we have seen it again with the war in Eastern Europe,” he stressed.

The two met on the sidelines of the conference with the IMF boss expressing confidence in the steps Ghana was taking to secure Board approval for a bailout.

Ghana is currently engaging the Fund for a $3 billion loan facility to complement its economic mix which was worsened by the two events even though the opposition blames the mismanagement of the economy for the downturn.

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