Economist, Dr. Patrick Asuming is urging government to leverage on the Staff Level Agreement and fulfill its part of the agreement in order to restore macroeconomic stability in the economy.
Dr. Asuming maintains that the country is not out of the woods with just the announcement of the Staff Level Agreement.
His comments come on the back of the announcement of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reaching a staff-level agreement with Ghana on economic policies and reforms to be supported by a new three-year arrangement under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) of about US$3 billion.
In an interview with Citi , Dr. Patrick Asuming underscored the need for government to broaden stakeholder consultation to ensure that all parties buy into the program.
“A lot of promises have been made in the agreement which places a lot of obligations on government before the deal will happen. So you have to do some funding assurances like an assurance that a debt restructuring has happened.”
“But beyond that, one could see that there is a lot of conversation about debt restructuring on public financing dealing with revenue mobilization and expenditure rationalization,” he added.
“On paper, this seems like you are trying to address some of the key challenges that the economy is facing.’’
“Just because we have a good-sounding policy on paper doesn’t mean we are out of the woods. We really have to actually go out there and implement them, so I hope that the government will broaden the stakeholder consultation and ensure that the real implementation is done,” he urged.