Ghana Risking Another IMF Return - Economist Warns of 2033 Debt Cycle | News Feed

[00:00:00]Now economics Professor Godfrey Bokpin is projecting that Ghana could return to another IMF supported program by 2033 if long-standing structural and fiscal challenges are not properly addressed.

[00:00:11]He says trend analysis of Ghana's economic trajectory suggests the country risks repeating its cycle of recurring IMF interventions. The Professor of Finance argues Ghana appears not to have fully learned from its repeated engagement from the International Monetary Fund.

[00:00:29]The reasons Dr. Kwame Nkrumah cited for approaching the IMF isn't are not substantially different from the reasons we cited in 2022 for our current program. And if you check all the past programs, the reasons are almost the same.

[00:00:49]So what it means is that if we're learning from past programs with determination, we should be able to identify why we've been going there that often. And I can assure you there's a way you can predict if these things persist that we will be there.

[00:01:07]When government announced that they were exiting the program, we did our analysis and concluded that Ghana will be fully ready for another IMF supported program by 2032 or 2033.

[00:01:23]And if you check the gap between that time and when the IMF says that Snet will be collapsing, if the difference is just small, we would have eroded all the fiscal gains by that time.

[00:01:38]Because we haven't changed.

[00:01:40]We haven't. Sometimes when we do so well, it's more of the same.