IMF forced us to extend progammme - Dep Finance Minister

A Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr. Kwaku Kwarteng has explained that government extended the three-year International Monetary Fund (IMF) Credit Facility programme by a year because the IMF threatened to immediately abrogate the whole deal if government declined the proposal.

In a radio interview with Accra based Citi FM on Monday, he said the IMF threatened not to continue with the fourth quarter review of the programme if Ghana rejected the request for an extension.

“And the IMF said they will not be doing the fourth review which had already delayed when this discussions were going on. They are essentially telling you that we will not abandon the programme and of course, the statement will be, we went into the programme with Ghana two years on, the economy has so under-performed, they’ve missed their target, they have not complied with the terms of the programme, therefore, we have decided to sack them.”
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He added that “That was in plain language that the IMF was telling us that if you do not extend beyond first quarter of 2018, then we think that we are not even going for the review. What we didn’t anticipate was the response we subsequently got from the IMF, if we do not extend then there is no way we were going to achieve the objectives of the programme so they will end the programme today,” he said.”

He said in the best interest of the nation, the government therefore decided to extend the programme to April 2019.

“And we weighed the option and so we put it to them, we told them that what we are willing to do is that we will prepare the 2018 budget statement in November 2017 when we will still be under the programme. So the 2018 budget statement will be IMF programme compliance” he said.

The opposition New Patriotic Party had in the past criticized the Mahama government for putting Ghana under the IMF programme and promised not to extend it after the programme elapsed in 2018.