The second review of the International Monetary Fund 3 year credit facility for Ghana will start in October, 2015.
According to the Minister of Finance Seth Terkper ,” The IMF board approved or confirmed if you will, I think it was in this room that we did the press briefing with the IMF mission , the board as at two days has approved that report for the first review , we are preparing for the second review as at October and we hope that the trend will continue “.
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a statement on August 31 sanctioned the disbursement of about 116 million dollars to Ghana, bringing total disbursements under the IMF program to about 233 million dollars after the completion of the first review.
Addressing the media on the state of the economy following some developments on the international front, Seth Terkper said Ghana is committed to consolidating current economic gains.
Earlier the Civil Society Platform on Ghana’s IMF Bailout program is demanding government ensures fiscal discipline to guarantee a pass in the second review of the program.
“It’s early days yet, I will say it’s too short to really judge our adherence to all the conditions. Our major concern is ensuring that we exercise a great level of fiscal discipline because that is what got us into this mess in the first place.”
Chairman of the Civil Society Platform on Ghana’s IMF Bailout program Joe Winful stated this in an interview on Citi fm.
The first IMF review was described as positive despite concerns that the central bank’s ceiling for financing government was technically missed by a small margin.
Meanwhile Seth Terkper also revealed government has secured some guarantees from the World.
He said,”the other important information is that the World Bank has approved first budget support and also a policy based guarantee. So this year when we do the sovereign bond, we shall be doing it with a World Bank guarantee.
The World Bank has also approved the partial risk guarantee, which is the guarantee that is required to secure the investments in the Sankofa field. So what we can say is that the Sankofa project, the document will be signed I believe this afternoon or tomorrow and that should confirm the government’s medium term plan for the power situation.”
Source: citifmonline