{"id":1234290,"date":"2022-10-25T14:23:57","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T14:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/10\/25\/ghana-ruling-party-mps-coalition-asks-president-to-sack-finance-minister\/"},"modified":"2022-10-25T14:23:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T14:23:57","slug":"ghana-ruling-party-mps-coalition-asks-president-to-sack-finance-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/10\/25\/ghana-ruling-party-mps-coalition-asks-president-to-sack-finance-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghana ruling party MPs coalition asks president to sack finance minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Christian Akorlie and Cooper Inveen<\/p>\n

Accra \u2013 A majority of Ghana\u2019s ruling party parliamentarians on Tuesday asked the president to sack finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta and his deputy, in order to \u201crestore hope in the financial sector\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ghana is facing its worst economic crisis in a generation. Last week was the cedi currency\u2019s worst in 15 years, falling nearly 20% against the dollar, and consumer inflation is hovering at a 21-year high of 37.2%. <\/p>\n

With nearly half of all government revenue going towards interest payments, concerns that Ghana might need to restructure its debt in order to secure a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have further strained market confidence.<\/p>\n

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Speaking on behalf of 80 of the 137 NPP members, Andy Appiah-Kubi said the members of parliament would not take part in any business of government and would boycott budget hearings until its demands are met.<\/p>\n

Parliament is set to begin debating the 2023 budget in the coming days.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have voiced our concerns to the president\u2026without any positive response,\u201d Appiah-Kubi said. \u201cUntil such persons are made to resign or otherwise removed from office, we\u2026will not participate in any business of government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, NDC parliamentarians on Tuesday said they would soon table a motion for Ofori-Atta\u2019s impeachment, without specifying when.<\/p>\n

Ghana\u2019s President Nana Akufo-Addo already faces a hung parliament, with membership split down the middle between the two major parties. Even single abstentions often hold back ruling party proposals from becoming legislation.<\/p>\n

The West African gold, cocoa and oil-producing country is negotiating a support programme from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a bid to reduce economic hardship that has spurred several rounds of protests.<\/p>\n

Ofori-Atta, a former banker before being named finance minister in 2016, had repeatedly pledged not to seek IMF assistance before finally engaging the Fund in July.<\/p>\n

Yields on Ghana\u2019s dollar-denominated sovereign bonds spiked to new highs on news of the parliamentarians seeking to oust the finance minister, with the 2042 maturity XS2325747637=TE climbing the most to 33.49% before slipping back to 33.39% as of 1145 GMT, TradeWeb data showed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarkets will likely view any change with the potential to slow IMF negotiations as a negative,\u201d said Razia Khan, chief economist for Africa and the Middle East at Standard Chartered.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeedy arrangement of an IMF programme is of the essence, and the current team has been closely involved in those negotiations,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Christian Akorlie and Cooper Inveen Accra \u2013 A majority of Ghana\u2019s ruling party parliamentarians on Tuesday asked the president to sack finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta and his deputy, in order to \u201crestore hope in the financial sector\u201d. Ghana is facing its worst economic crisis in a generation. Last week was the cedi currency\u2019s worst […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1234290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234290","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=1234290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1234290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1234290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1234290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}