News:
September 9, 2017
Minister for Monitoring and Evaluation, Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei says it is in the interest of Ghana to conclude on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme. in an interview with ghanamps.com.
You cannot go on an IMF programme and say you have failed, “investors will say we cannot do anything for you”. The only choice is to show that we are able bring the programme on truck with the 2018 budget and then in 2019 we exit, he said.
According to the former Minister of State at the Finance Ministry, if the John Mahama government were doing well by April of 2018 we could have exited the IMF programme. “But they have taken us off truck and so we have the responsibility as a government to bring it back on truck”.
Again the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) government should be thankful that we are trying to bring the economy back on truck, when you have a deficit of 6.6 and 9.1 inflation they could not bring down, he stated.
He further noted in 2014 the then Minority New Patriotic Party (NPP) cautioned the previous NDC government the way they were running the economy they will not have choice but to hook on to the IMF programme but they will not listen.
He believes that if the NDC then had listened to them and behaved properly in terms of managing the economy, we will not have landed ourselves with the IMF programme, and again talk about missing the target, “they talked about a home grown programme, where did it end us?
Dr Anthony Akoto Osei said the NDC government messed up Ghana in terms of management of the economy. “It is the interest of Ghana that we stabilize the economy and not that we are looking up to IMF to be economically disciplined”, heemphasised.
By: Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/ghanamps.com