A leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Gabby Asare Otchere Darko has dropped hints of Ghana possibly going to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for an economic bailout.
In a series of tweets Monday morning, President Akufo-Addo’s cousin revealed that the much-touted Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy) that was expected to inject some capital into the economy has delivered only 10 percent of the targeted revenue.
There’s, understandably, a national aversion to an IMF program, because of the history of conditionalities which attack sacred cows like jobs and social interventions. Akufo-Addo will not sacrifice free SHS and other critical welfare policies to help the poor for any assistance.
— Gabby Otchere-Darko (@GabbyDarko) June 27, 2022
According to him, E-levy was expected to rake in some 600 million cedis by now after its implementation but has so far delivered only 60 million cedis.
Ghana is reeling under a severe economic crisis as fuel and cost of other products have tripled since the beginning of the year. The situation has been compounded by the Russia-Ukraine war which has recently been highlighted by the NPP government as the single major contributory factor to the skyrocketing fuel prices in Ghana, like other African countries, which has consequently affected the price of general commodities including food.
Mr Otchere Darko added that he is not against an IMF programme in principle but against a programme that will impose crippling sanctions that will hit the poor Ghanaian hard.
