Ghana "misled" IMF

Ghana's former government misled the IMF in order to secure funding, an IMF official told the BBC's World Business Report.

The former government secured nearly $100m of soft loans on the basis of inaccurate information, the IMF said.

Ghana's new government has since paid back some of the money, while the IMF has waived repayment of the rest, the official added.

The inaccuracies were highlighted by the New Patriotic Party, which took power in early 2001.

The National Democratic Congress - under Jerry Rawlings - had changed the country's economic data to meet targets in the Fund's Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility.

Changing data

Since then, the new government has been pushing ahead with reforms to try and stabilise the economy.

"The precise motive is something that we are not able to determine after the fact, especially since the governor of the Bank of Ghana at the time is no longer in office," Hugh Brayden Kemp, an IMF official in Ghana, said.

"I think people can draw their own conclusion about why they might have wanted to understate the rate of monetary growth at a time when monetary supply was in fact growing very rapidly," he added.

"We have no reason to believe that this particular instance of misreporting of data was related to corrupt practices," Mr Brayden Kemp added.

The misreporting of figures is highly unusual, he said.