Ghana’s Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has left the country for China to begin negotiations on the dent restructuring with Chinese officials.
According to a report by Myjoyonline.com, the Minister left the country over the weekend. He will visit Addis Ababa, where he is attending the UNECA High-Level Ministers meeting on Global Financial Architecture.
Ofori-Atta will continue to China after the meeting.
The Minister, amongst others, will be seeking financial assurances for Ghana’s programme with the International Monetary Fund from China.
The trip was postponed to the end of March because it coincided with the National People’s Congress of China meeting in early March 2023.
The West African country’s Minister has already held meetings with officials of Exim Bank China in Ghana, all in the line of re-profiling the country’s debt to China.
Ken Ofori-Atta has previously opined in a meeting with the German Finance Minister, that China has committed to bilateral negotiation.
He is thus hopeful a deal can be reached to enable Ghana to present its case before the IMF Board.
“The big elephant in the room is China as in how they will comport themselves in the comparability of treatment because China wants to do bilateral. The discussion is on how they [China] can envelop as quickly as possible,” he said.
Meanwhile, government sources maintain that the Finance Minister’s visit to China marks a step closer to IMF programme approval by the IMF Board.
Ghana is hoping to restructure $5. 7 billion of its external debt, with China holding a third of it amounting to $1.7 billion.
The structure of Ghana’s external debt shows that the country owes China about $1.7 billion; Eurobonds, $13.1 billion and Multilateral, $ 8.1 billion dollars.
The rest are Paris Club countries, $1.9 billion and other creditors, $3.2 billion.
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