The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that the financial facility for Ghana should be reached and finalised before the end of this year.
The West African country had held talks with officials of the IMF for bailout funds to mitigate the impacts of Covid -19 and the high prices of eb=nergy and food resulting from the Russian war with Ukraine.
According to the reports by The Graphic on Tuesday, the Managing Director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, assured President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in a closed-door meeting on Monday, on the sidelines of the Africa Adaptation Summit, a conference on climate change, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands that “we understand the urgency and we will move as quickly as possible”.
The reports added that Ghana is negotiating for $3 billion from the IMF to help the country navigate through the hostile economic crisis in which it finds itself.
A delegation from the IMF, led by the Mission Chief for Ghana, Carlo Sdralevich, had visited Ghana and held initial discussions with the Ministry of Finance on a possible IMF-supported programme.
The IMF boss, according to the reports, explained that Ghana’s current economic challenges were not locally generated, but were as a result of external shocks.
“Like everybody on this planet, you have been hurt by exogenous shocks. First the pandemic, then Russia’s war in Ukraine. We need to realise that it is not because of bad policies in the country, but because of this combination of shocks and, therefore, we have to support Ghana,” the newspaper quoted IMF boss as saying.
GIK/APA