by Mohammed Awal
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has expressed worry over the passing of the Bank of Ghana amendment bill by the Parliament of Ghana.
This follows a visit by a team from IMF to Accra led by Joël Toujas-Bernaté, last week to continue discussions on the third review of Ghana’s financial and economic programme supported by the IMF’s Extended Credit Facility (ECF).
Parliament recently passed the Bank of Ghana amendment bill - one of the important requirements to the IMF conditionality. IMF wants zero percent financing from the central bank to government. But parliament kept 5 percent cap.
Mr. Toujas-Bernaté said after the meeting that further deliberation needs to be held on the aspects of the legislation recently passed by Parliament.
He said “following recent progress in implementing the IMF-supported program, including the passing by Parliament of several important legislations, we had constructive discussions with the authorities during this week on a few outstanding issues.
“The discussions focused mainly on updating the macroeconomic projections, firming up the fiscal outlook for 2016, and ascertaining that financial pressures faced by the main State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in the energy sector will not pose additional risks to the central government budget.
“Understandings were reached on many of these issues. Outstanding questions remain with regards to certain elements of the legislations recently passed by Parliament and discussions will continue.”
As part of the visit, the team from the IMF met with President John Dramani Mahama; Finance Minister Seth Terkper; Bank of Ghana Governor Dr. Abdul-Nashiri Issahaku; and other senior officials.
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