IMF to implement Senchi Consensus

A participant of the 2014 National Economic Forum (NEC) has hinted that most of the recommendations that Ghanaians will see under the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have already been crafted under the report issued after the Forum.

Professor Peter Quartey says the report contains the magic wand that would turn the country’s economy around but since government appeared to lack the political will to implement some of the “tough” decisions in there, IMF’s intervention will be the best in order to get those decisions implemented on behalf of government.

Speaking on TV3’s Hot Issues over the weekend, the Head of the Department of Economics of University of Ghana admitted that Ghana is known to “craft all the policies but implementation has been the problem”.

He, therefore, adduced that government had sought the IMF’s hand to just implement the recommendations made by the over 140 participants of the three-day Forum, which was under the chairmanship of Vice President Paa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur.

Government has contacted the IMF to discuss ways of helping put Ghana’s worsening economic condition back on track, a decision, Prof. Quartey said was crafted in the Senchi report, though fears are rife the Bretton Wood institution would take decisions which may be unfriendly to the masses.

But Professor Quartey, who was a member of the Macroeconomic Sub-Committee during the Forum, said all that the IMF will do are already in the Senchi Report, which was submitted to President John Dramani Mahama by his Vice on July 23 at the Flagstaff House.

There has been a credibility problem with government, Professor Quartey observed, because it has missed its target over the past years.

He, therefore, indicated that the IMF is expected to boost confidence of investors in the Ghanaian economy by implementing the same policies that had been planned by government.