Former President John Agyekum Kufour has said Ghana under his administration was fined $36 million by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as result of the false report of the state of the Ghanaian economy to the IMF by the National Democratic Congress’ administration under Former President Jerry John Rawlings.
Detailing the difficulties his government faced upon assumption of power in 2001, the former president recalled that his government was compelled to resort to the IMF and other donor partners of the country for a bailout after realizing that the economy was in a precarious state but the IMF fined the country a whooping $36 million. The said fine, he stated, was because of the NDC government’s misreporting of the state of the economy to the country’s international developmental partners including the Bretton Woods institution.
The second president of the fourth republic added that his government had tried to persuade the IMF to grant the country the needed support in view of the fact that his government was different from the NDC government in terms of ideology and philosophy and was committed to transparency and accountability. The IMF, he recollected, however insisted that unless the country paid the fine, it could not offer the Ghana any financial support.
“We tried talking our way around within the donor partners to see if they would trust that we had come in with a different outlook and ideology and philosophy and that we would do things differently from the outgone administration but they wouldn’t listen to us.
The multilaterals, the IMF, they told us the previous regime had misreported to them about the state of the economy and Ghana was fined $36 million. They said unless we settled that fine they won’t trade with us,” the former president recollected.
Recounting the poor state of the country’s economy when he took over the reigns of governance, the former president said that the country was overburdened with debt to the extent that Nigeria refused to supply Ghana crude oil leading to shortage of petroleum products in the country because Ghana could not honor its financial obligation to the African most populace country.
“From Day One into office when we discovered that our economy was overladen with indebtedness, immediately we saw that we have been hit, we couldn’t even get crude oil to get for TOR to refine for petrol stations and all. How would we last? Our sister nation Nigeria wouldn’t continue to give us crude oil. Why? Because the previous regime hadn’t paid for the supplies and there were long queues at filling stations,” he said.
Former president Kufour while describing the bad economic situation his government found itself at the time said “it was like we were forced into some trap, and looking ahead we saw an abyss” stating that one of his political opponents in view of the poor economic state had intimated that his government could not stay in power for three months.
The former president who was speaking in an interview on Accra based Asaase Radio on the Sunday Night Show said his government was forced to implement the HIPC initiative from the IMF because of the difficult economic state of the country at the time.
