There is no rush to go to the international capital market – Ofori-Atta

Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, has stated that Ghana is not in a rush to go to the international capital market.

Ghana has been shut out of the international capital market after its debt levels reached unsustainable levels.

It had to embark on a debt restructuring programme for both domestic and external debt.

He said during a joint Ghana-IMF press conference in Washington on Thursday, May 18 “In addition to the revenue measures that we saw in the budget that are improving at GRA and that will give us the resource to move forward, curtailing and managing our expenditures are going to be important.

“There is no rush in going back to the international capital market, our expectation is that in managing our expenditure and increasing our revenue we will have the resources to do it. Working towards the capital market is important because we want to get our ratings up and make the country more attractive for investors, especially FDIs. So no one is rushing to the capital market at this juncture,” he added.

The Minister of State in charge of Finance, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam, had earlier stated that the approval of Ghana’s request for a financial bailout from the International Monetary Fund will open doors for Ghana to re-enter the international capital market.

The Minister noted that the disbursement of the IMF funds will boost investor confidence in the economy.

“We will go back to the market because we will leverage on the IMF deal to balance our financing needs. We have development partners supporting, but a chunk of our inflows will come from the market so with the IMF approval, we are very confident that investor confidence in Ghana will increase. The institutions upgrading us will look favourably to Ghana and then as a result of all these, we could return to market very soon,” he was earlier quoted by citinewsroom.com.