Daily Times

ACCRA: Ghana’s new government plans to review its $918 million programme with the International Monetary Fund because it may need more money for its spending plans, a minister-designate said on Friday.

The three-year programme, signed by the previous government in April 2015, imposes strict targets for revenue collection and spending. It aims to reduce inflation, the public debt and the budget deficit and restore rapid growth to Ghana’s economy.

President Nana Akufo-Addo won December’s election in part by promising voters he would give $1 million to each constituency per year for development, build a dam in every village and a factory in every district. “It (the IMF programme) must be reviewed. It will certainly be reviewed,” Yaw Osafo-Maafo told a parliamentary committee vetting his appointment as senior minister.

“The current programme … squeezes the fiscal space, and from the point of view of the NPP, the IMF programme must be reviewed,” Osafo-Maafo said. The review would be conducted with the Fund, he said. The New Patriotic Party has said it will maintain fiscal discipline and give Ghana double-digit growth for each of the four years of its term in office.