His Excellency President Nana Akuffo Addo and vice president Dr Mahamudu Bawumia through the Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, has called for debt forgiveness and cancellation for Ghana and other debt distressed countries in the world.
Mr Ken Ofori-Atta made the call at a virtual plenary session of the Development Committee (DC) of the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Friday 22 October 2020.
He said Ghana and these countries need this favour and gesture to protect lives and rescue their economies from the deadly impact of coronavirus (COVID-19). And that the COVID-19 crisis has reversed years of development gains and has thrown millions of people into poverty.
The Finance minister added that a lot of countries will take a longer time to recover on the shocks of covid-19.
He later Stressed on the introduction of the debt service suspension initiative (DSSI) by the G20 countries for developing countries was critical for “giving fiscal space to economies”, so much is needed to be done to help strengthen the abilities of debt distress countries to contain the effects of the economies.
Mr Ken Ofori-Atta knowing the G20 had agreed to extend the covid-19 Debt service suspension initiative (DSSI) by six months due to the ravaging effects of covid-19 on poor countries made this call.
It gives qualified countries an opportunity to suspend principal or interest payments on official bilateral debt from May 1 to June 2021, in turn creating fiscal space for these countries to redeploy resources into critical sectors of the economy mainly in areas of protecting lives against covid-19, enhancing response programmes against the virus and support businesses to survive.
Ghana was part of the 73 eligible countries but had not shown interest in the initiative, the World Bank stated this year in April that Ghana could get a $354.1 million, equivalent to 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), from the DSSI.
Filed By : Agaatorne Douglas Asaah
