Despite Ghana’s numerous natural resources, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, is surprised that the nation has to rely on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank for assistance.
The Speaker of Parliament, who was speaking at a public forum in Ho in the Volta region to commemorate Ghana’s three decades of parliamentary democracy, bemoaned the perpetual reliance on the Bretton Woods Institutions to stabilise the economy.
Mr. Bagbin, has, therefore, proposed an inclusive national development plan where citizens can make input and own it.
According to him, Parliament must give the requisite support to the state by ensuring that every administration sticks to the plan rather than following their manifestos to distort what is in the interest of the state rather than the party.
“I think it is time for us to redefine the roots, get a national development plan envisioned, where we will all buy into it. Get everybody once again on board, as the 1992 Constitution did, and then we will be moving in one direction.
“Not for NDC to win, change the direction, for NPP to win and change the direction and leave a lot of uncompleted projects, wasting a lot of natural resources and going to beg the IMF to salvage us when we know that the IMF has never supported any society to develop. No society in the world has developed through the assistance of the IMF,” he indicated.
The IMF has granted for the seventeenth time, a financial relief for Ghana to stabilise its economy.
Ghana’s latest request for the support was approved in May 2023 under the Akufo-Addo government who vowed never to resort to the IMF because it was a proud nation and seeking the bailout was an indictment on its reputation.
An amount of $3 billion was approved with the first 600 million dollars released to the Bank of Ghana.
With the subsequent releases hinged on Ghana meeting certain conditionalities proposed by the IMF, such as improvement in domestic revenue mobilisation, the second tranche of the money has stalled after government’s failure to satisfy the conditionalities.
Government is still convincing the Fund to release the money which was supposed to hit its account by November 1, 2023.
It is still in talks with its external creditors for debt relief worth $10.5 billion. The country has already submitted proposals to its commercial creditors seeking a haircut of up to 40% and additional debt rework with its bilateral creditors including China and the Paris Club.
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