Former Finance Minister Hon. Seth Emmanuel Terkper has admonished the ruling New Patriotic Party(NPP) government to as a matter of urgency open up their books in a transparent manner as far as their negotiations with the International Monetary Fund(IMF) is concerned.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with The New Crusading GUIDE newspaper to elicit his views on the current economic challenges and the stalling negotiations with the IMF for a possible bailout, the former finance minister stated that he had always expressed the view for the need to speed up the negotiation processes with the IMF because the delays further exacerbate the economic woes of the country which is growing dire by the day.
“However, as a country we should also be careful in the same breath not to sacrifice a sound IMF program on the altar of speed or haste to get out of this economic quagmire through the Fund’s bailout”, he urged.
Hon. Terkper said, the skepticism on the part of IMF which has precipitated the delay is purely borne out of the inconsistencies in the economic figures being churned out by the Ministry of finance where by some debt portfolios like bailout cost(banking sector)and the energy sector cost or liabilities are treated as below the line budget items which will obviously would not pass the lens of the Fund.
He said, “If we want to get to the dept or bottom of the problem so as to proffer proper solutions then it requires that we also be transparent and make a full disclosure however unpalatable it may be so that we can get the full benefits of the program that we are negotiating.”
He opined that in as much as there’s the need hasten cautiously, there’s also the need to speed up the process to give confidence to the market and others even if you are not going to dictate the market pace immediately.
“If this is achieved, it will stop things like the downgrades and to give a positive signal for proper restructuring of the debt, because the thing is that we’ve delayed for far too long, we should have gone to the IMF in 2021 when we had the covid inflows between 2020-2021 amounting to some six billion dollars but the government decided to go on expenditure spree with stagnant revenue.
The IMF have serious reservation about things like the bailout cost and others being put out as off budget and those are the things the IMF and world Bank are arguing. The arrears are high and debts nearing unsustainable levels and that increases the skepticism in the market, Terkper stressed.
