$940m IMF bailout not enough

Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur says the 940-million dollar package to be given to Ghana by the International Monetary Fund is not enough. “940 million dollars over a three-year period is not a lot of money, it is just about 300 million dollars a year,” the Vice President said during the opening of the Regional Ministers conference in Cape-Coast, Central region. The former governor of the Central Bank added: “Now our infrastructure requirements are in the region of about five billion dollars a year, so infrastructure alone is overwhelmingly bigger than the resources that we are receiving from the IMF”. A team from the Bretton Woods institution last month reached an agreement with a Ghanaian delegation led by former Finance Minister Kwesi Botchwey to bailout Ghana’s economy with an amount of US$940 million. The amount, according to the mission led by Joel Toujas-Bernaté, is an economic programme that could be supported by a three-year Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement. Mr. Amissah-Arthur said at the Cape Coast event that the IMF programme requires that the country will be disciplined with its expenditure, adding that the programme will bring Ghana some advantages. “The IMF money is also good because it assures investors who invest in our economy that there would be stability in the economy so that they would make some money...but a fund programme requires a lot of discipline; discipline to manage the resources you have and discipline to look forward to better things”.