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Calls for the change of the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori Atta, have intensified following the government’s failure to initiate a good deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout.
It has been weeks since the announcement of Ken Ofori Atta-led team of negotiators’ engagement with the Fund.
However, there have been concerns raised that the delay in closing the deal with the Fund leaves the country’s economy in continuous decline.
A United States investment banking giant, Goldman Sachs, while in Ghana to ascertain the status of a programme in Accra, said to investors, “delayed conclusion creates the risk of further deficit monetisation by the BoG, cedi depreciation and a decline in foreign exchange reserves”.
This, according to Goldman Sachs, implies that “the macroeconomic outlook may deteriorate further in the near term”.
Thus, the call for President Akufo-Addo to immediately remove from office Ken Ofori Atta or the minister resigns from the position to allow fresh minds to take over.
Dr Julius Kweku Kattah, an international economist and a fellow at Chartered Economists Ghana, who supported this call, said the reshuffling of ministers was long overdue.
According to him, the delays in effecting the change will not only negatively impact the economy locally, but internationally.
“We have wasted a lot of time. That gap is crucial in the development process. When your economic development is supposed to drive at a certain pace and we later on get to know that its implementation has delayed, then we are not going to achieve our target for the period we have designed the budget for,” he said.
Meanwhile, a government spokesperson on Governance and Security, Palgrave Boakye Danquah, had indicated in an interview with TV3 that the Akufo-Addo-led government will by the end of the year 2022 or the beginning of 2023 close its deal with the Fund.
“By the end of the year or early 2023, we should have positive feedback from the IMF,” he said.
