$3b IMF deal: Paying our debt won't reduce the price of Kenkey — Kwesi Pratt jabs

According to him, the $3 billion bailout will make no significant impact on the living conditions of Ghanaians.

He believes the IMF deal is only good to cancel the country's debt but will not reduce the hardships on the ordinary citizen.

"You will pay the debt but the price of Kenkey won’t reduce. You will pay up the debt but it won’t reduce electricity bills. You will discharge the debt but transport fares won’t come down. Maybe paying up the debt will bring us some peace but it won’t ease our plight to the extent that commodity prices will reduce," he said on Accra-based Peace FM.

He added: "I have no assurance that whether this money comes or not, our hardships will go down."

Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta and his team made up of the Governor of Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr. Ernest Addison and members of the economic management team are currently in Washington DC in the United States of America (USA) to make a final push for the board of the IMF to approve a $3 billion bailout.

The country defaulted in servicing its debt last year and is now working with bilateral creditors to restructure their component to be able to earn a US$3 billion IMF assistance to help slow down inflation, prop up the currency and return the economy to the path of growth.

Earlier, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said Ghana will secure the financial bailout it is seeking from the IMF by March 2023.

He said everything that is required for Ghana to do or submit in order to reach an agreement with the fund has been done, and optimistic the processes have been finalized.

He stressed that there was a vital need for other creditors to support the efforts that his government was undertaking to restructure both the external and domestic debts of the country, to enable the IMF deal to fall through quickly.