Honorary Vice President of think tank Imani Centre for Policy and Education (Imani Africa) Bright Simons has asserted that though Ghana’s economy is facing serious challenges, especially with regard to its fiscal space, the economy is not in a full crisis situation and the Government can act forthrightly to salvage it from collapse.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Newsfile Saturday January 21, 2022, Bright Simons argued that the Government of the day still has the legitimacy and credibility to work to save the dire economic situation the country finds itself.
“Objectively and evidently we are not there [ in a full-blown economic crisis]. So we have a lot of room still left. And there is also still a lot of legitimacy left of the Government. It is still offering Treasury bills and people are still buying them.
Though some entities must buy Treasury bills, a lot of those that are buying them must not buy; they don’t have the regulatory requirement to buy. So the Government in this still has credit. In those circumstances, why do you allow things to degenerate further?” He quizzed
Government, in order to achieve debt sustainability, a key requirement for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is restructuring its foreign and domestic debt.
Its domestic debt exchange programme has been fiercely resisted especially by independent bondholders, due principally to lack of consultation before the announcement of the programme.
Government’s initial plan of including pension funds in its domestic debt exchange programme had to be dropped after organised labour objected to it ferociously.
But the Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta is optimistic that some compromise could be reached for the programme to succeed.
source: theGhanaianvoice.com
