Ghana expects the International Monetary Fund(IMF)’s board to approve a US$3bn loan by the end of the second quarter of 2023, finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta said in a presentation on Thursday.
The embattled West African country secured a staff-level agreement with the IMF for the US$3bn support package in December 2022.
But the Fund requires bilateral lenders to provide assurances they will restructure its debt as a condition of signing off on the loan.
Ofori-Atta said official creditor financial assurances were expected by May and the country’s domestic debt exchange programme would yield C38bn (US$3.4bn) of debt service savings in 2023.
He added that US$20bn of external debt was eligible for restructuring, 66% of the external debt stock. Of that, US$5.4bn in official creditor debt will be restructured.
A memorandum of understanding with official creditors and an agreement in principle on Eurobond restructuring are expected by July, with a 2030 Eurobond partially guaranteed by the World Bank included in the restructuring, the minister said.
He added that Ghana needs a US$1.5bn financial stability fund to ensure appropriate solvency and liquidity.
“The World Bank has fortunately agreed to support this fund with a quarter of a billion … and government, looking at the space we have, also committing about US$500m to that,” Ofori-Atta said at the virtual briefing.
Ghana’s net foreign exchange reserves fell sharply in 2022 and are currently US$2.6bn, central bank governor Ernest Addison said in the briefing.
The government also aims to bring rampant inflation down to 8% in the medium term and is targeting real GDP growth of 5% over the same period, a presentation accompanying the briefing said.
Ghana’s inflation reached a more than two-decade high of 54.1% in December but has since slowed, falling to 45% year on year in March.
