May 13 (Bloomberg) -- Ghana’s talks with the International Monetary Fund over a $1 billion loan are “going well” and the state may also seek funds from the African Development Bank to bolster its economy, Deputy Finance Minister Seth Terkper has said. The negotiations with the IMF are expected to conclude next week, Terkper said in an interview Wednesday in the capital, Accra. Ghana needs the loans to deal with a 12 percent drop in the cedi against the dollar this year and a budget deficit that reached 14.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2008. The West African nation is seeking funds from lenders and donors to stabilize the economy before it starts generating oil revenues in 2010. U.K. explorer Tullow Oil Plc expects to begin producing from its Jubilee field, which contains an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of crude, next year. “We don’t want to be complacent, waiting for the oil funds,” Terkper said. The talks with the IMF follow an accord reached at the March meeting of the Group of 20 industrial and emerging economies to increase international reserves to shore up IMF members’ economies. In March, the World Bank said it will provide $1.2 billion of interest-free loans to Ghana over the next three years to bolster its economy. Ghanaian economic growth is slowing as demand for its commodities drops amid the global financial crisis. The country ranks behind neighboring Ivory Coast as the world’s biggest cocoa producer and is Africa’s second-largest gold miner, after South Africa. Growth Revision The government is targeting economic growth of 5.9 percent this year, compared with the 7.3 percent achieved in 2008. Ghana may revise its growth target next month, said Terkper, who left a job at the IMF to take on the deputy ministerial post in the government of President John Atta Mills. “So far I think we are comfortable” with the target set in the March budget, Terkper said. “We are not separated from what’s going on in the world.” The struggling economy is also preventing the government from seeking funds from the international capital market. While Ghana sold a $750 million international bond in 2007, Terkper said there are no immediate plans to sell more bonds. “In the future, the market is part of the plan,” he said. Currently, “even if it was available to us, we wouldn’t do it.” Standard & Poor’s Rating Services in March revised its outlook on Ghana to “negative” from “stable” on concern the global economic crisis will hurt the country’s economy. Terkper wouldn’t elaborate on whether Ghana is in talks with the African Development Bank about additional loans, other than to say Ghana’s Vice President John Mahama is attending the bank’s annual meeting in Dakar this week. Aritcle by Emily Bowers Source: Bloomberg