IMF board approves $360 million disbursement to Ghana in December following third review

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) board is scheduled to meet in early December to approve a $360 million disbursement to Ghana.

This follows Ghana’s successful completion of the third review under the IMF program.

Director of Communications at the IMF Julie Kozack disclosed this at a news conference in Washington DC USA saying, “Once the review is completed by the IMF’s executive board, Ghana would have access to about $360 million in terms of disbursement. We are working, our staff are working toward a board meeting in early December and will provide additional details on the precise date when we have them”.

Ms. Kozack described the program’s performance as encouraging, noting that Ghana has met the necessary requirements for its debt restructuring.

“What I can say in addition is that the programme performance has been good. There has been in particular remarkable progress on debt restructuring” she added.

She highlighted that some macroeconomic projections have been achieved under the programme, indicating some level of recovery.

Economic growth in the first half of 2024 exceeded our expectations, exceeded our projections. Inflation has declined and the fiscal and external positions have shown marked improvement”, she said.

She warned against decisions that may cause slippages in the future.

“Looking ahead, what will be important for Ghana will be continued implementation of the policy and reform agendas, especially given the difficult situation that many countries in the region and globally face.

And it remains essential to fully restore macroeconomic stability and debt sustainability. We will, of course, have further updates on Ghana when we release the staff report, when we publish the staff report after the board meeting”, she added.

On October 4th, the IMF staff and the Ghanaian government reached a staff-level agreement on economic policies and reforms under the third review of Ghana’s Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement.

Following this, the IMF Board is expected to approve a disbursement in December 2024, bringing Ghana’s total funds under the program to $1.92 billion. Ghana has met all end-June 2024 quantitative targets and made significant progress on structural reforms, despite delays in a few areas.