Ghana on Track to Meeting Budget-Deficit Target, IMF Says
- Bloomberg
- Jul 1, 2015
- 2 min read
Ghana is on track to curb spending and meet its budget-deficit target for the year, the International Monetary Fund said.
The budget shortfall will probably be close to 7 percent of gross domestic product by the end of the year, below the target of 7.5 percent, mission chief Joel Toujas-Bernate said in the capital, Accra, on Tuesday.
“There was strict containment of spending through budget allocation,” Toujas-Bernate said. The government has started to clean up its payroll and cut spending on salaries and wages for state workers, he said.
The IMF agreed in April to loan Ghana almost $1 billion to help rein in inflation and stabilize the currency. The cedi has lost 26 percent against the dollar this year, making it the worst-performing African currency.
The fund will disburse about $100 million by the end of August following an IMF board meeting reviewing Ghana’s progress, according to Toujas-Bernate. The economy will probably expand 3.5 percent this year, he said. The worst power cuts in eight years and a drop in oil prices are curbing growth in the world’s second-biggest cocoa producer.
Ghana is planning to sell $1 billion of eurobonds in September, Toujas-Bernate said. The government decided not to go to the market this month, as earlier planned, because it wants to present a mid-year review of the 2015 budget to parliament first, James Klutse Avedzi, chairman of the parliamentary committee on finance, said by phone on Tuesday.
Yields on Ghana’s dollar bonds due in 2026 declined 10.4 basis points, or 0.1 percentage point, to 9.47 percent in Accra while the cedi gained 0.7 percent to 4.3538 per dollar.
Source: Bloomberg.com
By: Moses Mozart Dzawu & Pauline Bax
