The legal representative for the Individual Bondholders Association of Ghana, Martin Kpebu has expressed displeasure at the delay by the Finance Ministry to a call for stakeholder engagement.  

According to him, the way the government kept them in the dark with regard to the date for their meeting was disappointing.

“We are pained by the very slow manner in which government is dealing with this matter, too slow,” he said.

His comments were in response to a question by Evans Mensah on Newsnight on Tuesday on whether the Finance ministry had contacted the group to decide on the date for the negotiation.

“Absolute not, not even a phone call,” he added.

Mr Kpebu stressed that the delay by the government was taking a toll on his clients.

Thus, he said “individual lives are being impacted, the situation is very dire, this is not an emotional speech it is a fact. Somebody has given his money to you, it is time to pay, you say you don’t have money and you are taking all the time you have in the world.”

He described the government's action of keeping them in the dark as “insensitive and an act of bad governance.”

“That is very insensitive, we can’t run government like that, if your letters are even being typed, you can call us on phone, ooh we intend to meet you but you know we are now typing the letters. That’s better than just leaving us out there in the dark,” he said.

Government has extended the deadline for its domestic debt exchange programme to January 31.

This according to the state is to deepen stakeholder engagement on the proposed policy.

A tweet by the Ministry of Finance on Monday explained that the extension is to rally consensus towards a successful implementation of the programme.

“Building consensus is key to a successful economic recovery for Ghana.

“Pending further stakeholder engagement with institutional and individual investors, recently invited to join the debt exchange programme, the government is extending the expiration of the DDE to Jan 31, 2023”, the tweet said.