{"id":1148998,"date":"2022-07-14T12:04:19","date_gmt":"2022-07-14T12:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/07\/14\/agi-supports-govt-imf-move\/"},"modified":"2022-07-14T12:04:19","modified_gmt":"2022-07-14T12:04:19","slug":"agi-supports-govt-imf-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/07\/14\/agi-supports-govt-imf-move\/","title":{"rendered":"AGI Supports Govt IMF Move"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Seth Twum Akwaboah<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

CHIEF EXECUTIVE Officer of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Seth Twum Akwaboah, has described Government\u2019s request for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout as the best option to help Ghana return to economic stability.<\/p>\n

According to him, Ghana\u2019s economy has been plunged into its present situation due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, expenditure overruns during the 2020 elections which resulted in a budget deficit and the ongoing Russia\u2013Ukraine war.<\/p>\n

Mr. Twum Akwaboah, who disclosed this in an interview with DAILY GUIDE<\/strong> Tuesday, said given the present circumstances, Government can only be able to salvage the economy with an IMF support, considering the high rates of interest in the private markets.<\/p>\n

He said \u201cWe are under terrible pressure because our macro-economic indicators are not looking good. At this moment, we need a quick intervention. We are highly debted as a country at this moment. If you go to the regular bond market or the private sources to borrow, bear in mind that your interest will be high and it will be more difficult for you to pay.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also pointed out a quick intervention was needed to help stabilise the economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether government engagement with the IMF is late or not is not the issue, I don\u2019t think we have much choice. I have said it several times that if you are on a sick bed, you swallow a bitter pill in order to get up to do other things; so if you have the best of plans and you are sick, how do you get up to actualise those plans? The uncertainties surrounding it created the problem because the key budget envisaged was not going through, and the Russia-Ukraine war, so when you put the two together, these put the economy under a terrible situation,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

He additionally said what the business community and industry needed was the stability of the economy to support growth and expansion of the economy.<\/p>\n

The consequences of such economic stability, he stated, will reduce the policy and interest rates, which had compelled the banks not to lend to the private sector due to the challenges the latter were facing.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeep the stability of the system in order to guarantee private sector growth and expansion. If you don\u2019t stabilise the system in a predictable environment, it makes doing business difficult. If you don\u2019t have stability of the economy and the government continues to borrow from private sources, it becomes expensive and those ones add to your debt stock. Your risk level is high as they charge you premium,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

BY Ebenezer K. Amponsah<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seth Twum Akwaboah CHIEF EXECUTIVE Officer of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Seth Twum Akwaboah, has described Government\u2019s request for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout as the best option to help Ghana return to economic stability. According to him, Ghana\u2019s economy has been plunged into its present situation due to the emergence of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1149000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[1426,225,3074,503,3409],"class_list":["post-1148998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-agi","tag-govt","tag-imf","tag-move","tag-supports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1148998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1148998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1148998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1148998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}