• He said the Ministry of Finance secured some approval from parliament for $290 million to help sustain the economy during the pandemic
• However, the IMF country director has said that the IMF gave $1billion to Ghana during the COVID-19 pandemic
Economist Dr George Domfe, has said Ghana committed the $1 billion dollars received from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to balance the economy rather than its COVID-19 fight.
According to him, the country used the stabilization fund to help tackle the situation by providing foods, water and electricity among others to the people.
Speaking in an interview with GhanaWeb’s Amos Ekow Coffie, Mr Domfe said, money used for Ghana's Coronavirus fight came from the stabilization fund, which is meant to be an emergency fund.
“That one was not specifically used for COVID-19. It was used to balance the overall budget, it was not for COVID. The monies that went into COVID were the oil proceeds and we divided that into three categories. We have the stabilization fund, annual budget stabilization fund and the heritage fund.
The heritage fund we have kept that money for the future, we keep money in that account and it is an account in the US, then we have what we call the stabilization fund and that stabilization fund we put money in it so that when the economy is doing well we don’t use but in times of trouble Government don’t beg, that why it is called stabilization fund and that is the money we used to tackle the COVIF-19 pandemic,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Country Director for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dr. Albert Touna Mama, has said the IMF gave Ghana about $1billion to help sustain the economy in the face of the pandemic.
“We have been very aggressive in trying to help and in deploying emergency financing. You may recall that last year, we deployed $1 billion to Ghana, to make sure that the country will be well covered just in case the pandemic will be worse,” he said.
Reacting to claims that Ghana has nothing to show for its many programmes with the IMF, Dr Touna Mama said such statements are unfair.
“It is rooted in the misconception about what our role is. It is unfortunate because it corners policymakers into not thinking about a very viable option. It is very unfair to say Ghana has nothing to show for having existing programmes.” Read Full Story
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