The Stéphane Roudet-led International Monetary Fund (IMF) team that arrived in Ghana on September 26, 2022, has concluded its discussions with the government on policies and reforms that could be supported by a fund lending arrangement.
The Mission Chief for Ghana in a statement said, “key areas of focus included ensuring public finance sustainability while protecting the vulnerable, bolstering the credibility of monetary and exchange rate policies to reduce inflation and rebuild external buffers, preserving financial sector stability, and steps to encourage private investment and growth, including by improving governance, transparency, and public sector efficiency.
“The team will return to Washington, D.C. to advance its technical work. This includes making further progress on assessing Ghana’s debt sustainability. The discussions with the authorities will also continue in the weeks ahead, including during the upcoming Annual Meetings that will be convened at IMF headquarters.”
The IMF team as part of their visit to Ghana engaged stakeholders such as the Bank of Ghana, Parliament, business associations and civil society groups.
The conclusion of the mission for the IMF team comes after Ghana’s credit was downgraded to junk status by the rating agency, Fitch.
The agency downgraded Ghana’s Long-Term Local- and Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) to ‘CC’, from ‘CCC’.
According to Fitch, “the downgrade reflects the increased likelihood that Ghana will pursue a debt restructuring given mounting financing stress, with surging interest costs on domestic debt and a prolonged lack of access to Eurobond markets. There is a high likelihood that the IMF support programme currently being negotiated will require some form of debt treatment due to the climbing interest costs and structurally low revenue as a percentage of GDP.
“We believe this will be in the form of a debt exchange and will qualify as a distressed debt exchange under our criteria. The government has not confirmed or denied press reports that Ghana is preparing to negotiate a restructuring. Interest costs on external debt are lower than for domestic debt and near-term external debt amortisations appear manageable. However, we believe there could be an incentive to spread a debt restructuring burden across domestic and external creditors and therefore do not have a strong basis to differentiate between Foreign- and Local-Currency ratings at this time.
“Interest costs reached 47.5% of revenue in 2021 and 54% in 1H22. Interest payments on domestic debt comprise around 75% of total interest costs. This reflects high yields on domestic debt, which have climbed following a 34% YoY spike in inflation as of August 2022 and monetary tightening, with the Bank of Ghana hiking its policy rate to 22.0%, from 14.5% in February. Yields on the 91-day treasury bill reached 27.0% in August, up from 12.5% in August 2021, and 10-year yields have spiked to above 35% in September, from around 20% in 1Q22.
“We expect external financing access to stay limited until at least an IMF programme is agreed, as Ghana is likely to remain locked out of Eurobond markets, which had been the country’s regular source of external financing. The government obtained a USD750 million term loan from African Export-Import Bank (BBB/Stable this year and USD250 million in syndicated loans from global commercial banks. It can also use its sinking fund. We estimate Ghana faces around USD3 billion of external debt service costs in 2023, including amortisation and interest.”
PEN/SARA
