The 2023 National Budget, which will be put up to Parliament for approval in November 2022, would reportedly incorporate the agreements negotiated with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the bailout it is requesting.
After early talks, the IMF stated that Ghana’s government only needed to demonstrate that its debt level is manageable in order to receive the rescue it is seeking.
Bright Simons, vice president of IMANI Africa, and other analysts have hinted that it will be extremely difficult for the government to reach an agreement with the IMF before the budget is presented in the following three weeks.
Renowned economist and statesman, Kwame Pianim, has said that the information he has indicates that the bailout negotiations are not going well.
This is the time the country needs someone like the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, whose intervention, according to former President John Dramani Mahama, was critical to Ghana getting an IMF programme in 2015.
Mahama, in February 2022, said that he called on Otumfuo Osei Tutu to enquire from him whether he could get his friend, the then President of the World Bank, James D. Wolfensohn, to work on the IMF programme for the government, and the Asantehene readily accepted the request.
“Because of that programme, he (Otumfuo) flew to Washington to have talks with Mr. Wolfensohn, who, together with Otumfuo, went and spoke with the IMF Director, Madam Christine Lagarde, and within a short period of time, we had the Extended Credit Facility,” the ex-president said.
To date, the Otumfuo has not commented on the current IMF negotiations the government is having, probably because it has refused to call for a national dialogue on the current economic crisis like the one Mahama’s administration had in 2014.
“If the Akufo-Addo government needs the IMF bailout as it has indicated to help turn the economy around them it has to start bringing people like Otumfuo on board,” the former president said.