Audio By Carbonatix
The US Ambassador to Ghana has expressed optimism in the Ghanaian economy.
Robert Jackson said with Ghana government’s programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), inflation is set to dwindle in the coming days.
“The currency is stabilized as we are not seeing depreciation and as long as Ghana sticks with the IMF programme, we will soon see inflation going down and more economic forward,” he said.
The US chief diplomat in Ghana disclosed this in an interview with a private radio station, Citi FM.
Many Ghanaians have been apprehensive of government’s programme with the IMF especially with the stringent nature of some of the conditions.
One of the conditions is that the government has to freeze employment in the public sector, except the education and health sectors.
Another also called on the government to remove subsidies on utilities and fuel consumption in the country to ensure the working of the automatic adjustment formula (AAF).
Even though the US Ambassador welcomed some of the shortfalls of the IMF deal, he expressed overwhelming support for it.
He believes the magic wand to turning the fortune of the nation’s economy around lies in the deal, noting, things will go well if Ghana will remain in the programme as planned.
Ghana has thus far fared well in all three reviews conducted by an IMF-team.
Head of IMF mission to Ghana, Joel Toujas-Bernaté, said: “implementation of the program remains satisfactory.”
According to him, “We have seen most of the targets and performance criteria at the end of 2015 being achieved with just done small exceptions. The economic performance has been slightly better than expected.”
“The debt to GDP ratio last year increased slightly further to about 72% of GDP but the base of data accumulation has slowed down,” he said.
Optimistic of a better deal ahead of 2016, Mr Toujas-Bernate said: “What is very important is looking out for this year because the objective is to achieve a primary surplus for the fiscal deficit, for the first time in almost a decade, this will allow the debt to GDP ratio to decline in 2016 and then we would see much more.”
Robert Jackson who is barely six-months-old in Ghana lauded government for resolving the challenges facing the energy sector.
“Since I have been here, I think dumsor has largely been addressed in the short term but there is much more work to do,” he said.
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