The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cooled speculations that the country is poised to start talks on restructuring of its debt as part of plans to secure a $3 billion loan from the fund.

According to the Bretton Woods institution, the restructuring of the country’s debt would be dependent on the outcome of its Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA) report.

The IMF Director of Communications, Gerry Rice, who disclosed that at a news conference in Washington DC, USA, said the DSA report would indicate if there was the need for debt restructuring in the first place and if necessary, how it should be carried out as well as which areas would be affected.

“When a country requests financing from the IMF, we assess whether the country’s policies are consistent with debt sustainability as one of our requirements.

“We still need to conduct a thorough update of the debt situation in Ghana through our Debt Sustainability Analysis,” Mr Rice stated.

He added: “The last, I don’t know if it’s useful, I have here the last Debt Sustainability Analysis. We published this as part of the 2021 Article IV Staff Report with Ghana.

“ It said public debt was sustainable conditional on a rigorous and credible implementation of the authority’s medium-term consolidation plan to put debt on a declining trajectory and ensure continued market access”.

That, he said, would inform the next line of action as the government and the fund remained committed to ensuring no harm was done to the interest of stakeholders as a result of the programme.

An IMF team is in Accra to continue official negotiations with the government for the economic programme.

The team which arrived on Saturday, will be in the country till October 7, a statement from the IMF said.

The negotiations with the government team are meant to determine the form that an economic stabilisation programme, which will be the country’s 17th with the fund since 1957, should take and when it can kick off.

SOURCE : Graphiconline