APA – Accra (Ghana)
The report that the first tranche of the $3 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) support will be released immediately after the Executive Board of the fund approves the country’s programme on Wednesday, May 17, 2023, according to the Minister of State at the Ministry of Finance, Dr Mohammed Amin Adams, is one of the trending stores in the Ghanaian press on Monday.
The Graphic reports that the first tranche of the $3 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) support will be released immediately after the Executive Board of the fund approves the country’s programme on Wednesday, May 17, 2023, the Minister of State at the Ministry of Finance, Dr Mohammed Amin Adams, has told the Daily Graphic.
He said the first tranche of $600 million will be used for budget support and also serve as balance of payment support for the country.
The second tranche of another $600 million is expected to hit the accounts of the Bank of Ghana in November when the country completes the first phase of the programme.
The rest will be released in five tranches of $360 million each after each of the semi-annual reviews are successfully concluded.
Ghana’s economy has been faced with a myriad of challenges ranging from high inflation, which hit a 22-year high of 54.1 per cent in December 2022, and an unsustainable public debt of GH¢575.7 billion.
This prompted the country to seek help from the IMF in July last year, and although the government was able to reach a staff-level agreement with the fund in December last year, a board-level approval, which will pave the way for the disbursement of the $3 billion support, is hinged on the country’s ability to restructure both its domestic and external debts.
Although the domestic debt exchange programme has been concluded and described as a success by the Ministry of Finance, the restructuring of the external debt had held back the deal.
Last Friday, the country received good news as the Creditor Committee, co-chaired by China and France, granted the country with the financial assurances, paving the way for the Executive Board of the IMF to now approve Ghana’s programme.
The newspaper says that the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Association of Banks (GAB), John Awuah, has said that banks will soon transition into bigger fintech companies in the country.
With banks in the country continuously making investments to expand their digital footprints, the CEO said he foresaw a future where banks would no longer be competing with fintechs but would become bigger fintechs themselves.
Speaking in an interview with the Graphic Business at the “Money Summit”, he said he also expected a paradigm shift where the digital footprints of consumers would be the driving factor in the industry.
“We will get to a point, and we are approaching there, where the digital footprint of consumers will be the defining factor.
The future will see fewer human interactions, reflected in fewer mobile money agents,” he stated.
The Head of Fintech and Innovation at the Bank of Ghana, Kwame Oppong, also speaking at the summit, emphasised the need for collaboration between banks, telcos and fintechs to ensure progress in the industry.
He said competition was still high in the industry but there was the need for greater collaboration as well.“We can be friends in some circumstance and enemies in some circumstance but this is healthy for the overall progress of the industry.” he stated.
Mr Oppong also pointed out that lots of clients were now demonstrating clearly that it was more viable to build a business where consumers were given more choices in terms of digital financial services, adding that the BoG hoped to see more of this.“Our primary goal is to make sure the sector is safe and the industry is able to support the advancement of technology,” he stated.
The Ghanaian Times reports that former President John Dramani Mahama, has, yet again, recorded a landslide victory in the National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) presidential primaries to emerge as the party’s torchbearer for the 2024 general elections.
Mr Mahama got 297,603 of the valid votes cast representing 98.9 per cent ahead of KojoBonsu who garnered 3,181 votes representing 1.1 per cent in distant second.
A third candidate, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, a former Minister of Finance, who pulled out of the race on Friday night has not been assigned any votes though his name and picture was on the ballot paper.
The newspaper says that a $27 million dollar rice development project has been launched in Accra to boost rice production and aid Ghana’s quest to achieving national food security.
Dubbed, ‘Water-Energy-Food Nexus Programme (WEFP) for Better Lives for Rural Development in Ghana,’ it is being funded by the government of Korea.
The project seeks to develop 100 hectares of mechanised and irrigated farmland with the goal of producing more than 1,200 tons of quality rice seeds annually.
It is being implemented over the next five years by Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in partnership with the Korea Programme for International Cooperation in Agriculture (KOPIA) Ghana Centre.
Launching the project on Friday, the Korean Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Lim Jung-Taek noted that, high-yield rice varieties and agricultural mechanisation were This is the fourth time Mr Mahama is recording similar figures in the internal polls of the NDC having amassed 99.5 per cent of the valid votes in 2012, 95.10 per cent in 2015 and 95.24 per cent in a seven-man race in 2019.
Director of Electoral Services at the Electoral Commission, Dr Serebour Quicoo, who declared the results of Saturday’s internal polls in the wee hours yesterday in Accra said there were 4,653 rejected ballots.
In total, he said, there were 305,437 votes cast across the 420 polling centres of the primaries in the 275 constituencies.
The primaries also saw the election of 262 parliamentary candidates of the party for next year’s elections. crucial steps in boosting rice production and achieving greater self-sufficiency in the country.
In view of that, he said KOPIA Ghana Office and the CSIR have together developed six high-yield rice varieties and conducted preliminary research in preparation for the implementation of the project.
The quality rice seeds to be developed through the project, he said, would be distributed to over 12,000 farmers across the country free of charge.
Already, Mr Jung-Taek said that the KOPIA Ghana Office had established a rice seed warehouse in Dawhenya with a storage capacity of 78,000 bags of rice seeds to store the good-quality rice seeds for farmers.
GIK/APA
