Be the institution to lead financing of African economies, not the Bretton Woods – Ofori-Atta to AfDb
Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, has urged the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) to shoulder the responsibility of being the lead financing institution to African economies rather than it being the IMF or World Bank of the Bretton Woods Institution.
The Finance Minister is of the view that AfDB must strengthen itself to take control of financing on the Continent.
“We must remedy a situation where any financial institution, including the Bretton Woods, has a deeper foothold on our continent than our own African Development Bank”.
“Given the current local and global dynamics, it has become imperative that we vigorously mobilise resources through innovative means, including from the digital space. We must simply ‘uncover’ this potential to recover and build forward better”, Mr Ofori-Atta noted.
Furthermore, he stated that, “This bank must be unshackled to provide competitive financing for its members. We must lend support to the proposed reforms in respect of the regulations around ADF Funds to enable the bank to leverage these funds to raise more funds and on-lend at lower coupon rates.”
The Finance Minister made the above assertions speaking on the first day of the ongoing 2022 Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank in Accra.
The 57th Annual Meeting of the Bank Group seeks to look at the resilience of the African economies and the growth of its people post COVID-19.
