The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has identified five major threats that could jeopardise Ghana’s economic recovery drive.
The IMF presented the threats in the form of a Ghana Risk Assessment Matrix, which has identified the factors that have the tendency to slow Ghana’s economic growth.
The Goldstreet Business reported on Friday that the IMF categorised the risks into high, medium and low, using such categories to assess the risks.
Top on the list of risks is the tightening of global financial conditions, saying it can cause higher debt servicing and refinancing, as well as stress on vulnerable sovereign bond issuance and those with un-hedged dollar exposures.
It also identified the 2020 general elections, weakening of the state utility providers, potential significant drop in the prices of oil on the global market and stability problems arising from liquidity problems, and recommended strategies to the country to counter such threats.
The assessment and recommendations have come at a time Ghana has announced its exit from the IMF programme it signed in 2015 under the erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration.
Ghana recently issued some eurobonds, totalling $3 billion and it is likely to contract other loans to finance major projects and development programmes.
In a related development, the IMF has advised the government of Ghana to reduce the producer price of cocoa to reflect the actual price on the world market in the face falling world cocoa prices.
The failure to reduce the prices has resulted in the incurring of some GH1billion ($400,000) debts by the Ghana Cocobod, the body responsible for buying cocoa beans.
DAP/GIK/APA