Seth Terkper, a former Minister of Finance, has postulated that the test of resilience is not to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after ‘exit’ when crises strike but rather the situation should be managed by the nation.
He observed that that was what some countries did by distributing their Special Drawing Rights cash to lower income countries or use the money to enhance their financial position with the Fund.
“The test of resilience as far as the local economy is concerned is not to go to the IMF after “exit” when crises strike, rather manage the situation itself because that is what some countries did by distributing their Special Drawing Rights cash to lower income countries or use the money to enhance their financial position with the Fund,” Mr Terkper implored.
His comments come after Ken Ofori-Atta, Minister of Finance, while speaking at the government’s town-hall meeting to discuss the Electronic Transaction Levy (e-levy) indicated that the e-levy must be passed in order to avoid going back to the IMF for financial support and assistance.
According to him, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) accused of going to the IMF in 2014 but the New Patriotic Party (NPP) continued the programme and did not opt for only advice, but took balance of $988m and after “exit” in 2018, the NPP rushed to the IMF for $1b COVID-19 pandemic cash and 2022 Special Drawing Rate of $1b, used to reduce the deficit, not invest.
“So, we can deal with them for them to give us advice but we need not ever get into an IMF programme, if we do not do the e-levy, we are just pushing ourselves in a way that will potentially end up in a disaster and when we were on the IMF programme, we could not pay for nurses and teachers allowances, we could not hire anymore because there was restrictions on that, I mean, it is just really thinking you can go back to Egypt.
“In a way, we have forgotten how difficult and tenacious that master from Washington was,” Mr Ofori-Atta stated. -3news.com
