Bawumia: Gov’t must curtail non-concessional borrowing; cease reliance on Int’l markets
Vice President, Dr Mahammudu Bawumia, has said government needs to curtail non-concessional borrowing and cease its reliance on the international capital markets.
Speaking at the Accra Business School on Thursday, July 14, 2022, under the theme: ‘The Role of Information Technology Education in the Government’s Digitalisation Agenda’, the Vice President noted Ghana’s reliance on the international markets makes it vulnerable when the capital markets are ‘shut’ to emerging markets by investors.
According to the Vice President, Ghana borrows $3bn annually from the international market to meet its fiscal needs.
“We have to curtail non-concessional borrowing and our reliance on capital markets, the country’s reliance on the capital market to meet its $3bn fiscal needs every year, exposed the vulnerability of the country when the capital market was shutdown to emerging markets.
“This has heightened the need to build reserve buffers to cater for unanticipated shocks like the Covid and Russia-Ukraine war,” he said.
Speaking further at the event, the Vice President attributed the country’s economic woes and return to the IMF to the quadruple whammy.
According to him, had it not been the fiscal impact of the quadruple whammy, Ghana would not have sought for help from the IMF.
The quadruple whammy he explained were the energy sector excess capacity payments, the banking sector clean-up, COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Dr Bawumia said, the excess capacity payments of GHC 17 billion relate to a legacy of take or pay contracts that saddled the country’s economy with annual excess capacity charges of close to $1 billion.
Dr Bawumia said these were basically contracts to supply energy to Ghana in excess of Ghana’s requirements, but we were obligated to pay for the power whether the country uses it or not.
The excess capacity payments, he indicated, includes GHC 7 billion of payments for gas resulting from the previous government signing an offtake agreement for a fixed quantity of gas with ENI Sankofa on a take or pay basis which was way in excess of what was needed at the time.
“Not keeping up with the excess capacity payments would have meant throwing the country back into a new bout of dumsor.”
Bawumia said the country was also confronted with a banking crisis as a result of the mismanagement of the banking sector.
He said Ghana’s banking system was on the verge of collapse and not dealing decisively with it would have meant disaster for the economy with millions of people losing their savings.
“Direct COVID-19 expenditure amounted to GHC 12.0 billion, made up of GHC8.1 billion in 2020 and GHC 3.9billion in 2021.”
He indicated that the three items of expenditure cumulatively amounted to GHC54.0 billion (the equivalent of some US$7.0 billion), which was borrowed.
“The Ministry of Finance estimates that the interest payment on this borrowing for the three items amounts to GHC8.5 billion annually. This is some 23% of Ghana’s annual interest payments of GHC 37 billion,” he said.
“It should be noted that without the GHC54.0 billion debt for the three exceptional items (COVID-19, Financial Sector and Energy), Ghana’s debt to GDP would be within the sustainability threshold of some 68% instead of the 76.6% at the end of 2021.”
“If you take out the fiscal impact of this quadruple whammy, Ghana will not be going to the IMF for support because our fiscal, debt and balance of payments outlook would be sustainable.
“Of the four factors, two (COVID-19 and the Russia Ukraine war) were external and the other two (the banking sector clean up and the excess capacity payments) were the result of policies of the previous government,” he added.
