Africa-Press – Ghana. Mr Raphael Godlove Ahenu, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Global Media Foundation (GloMeF) has urged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to aggressively push Ghana to strengthen the economic management systems to bring the growing trend of corruption in the country under control.
“The IMF must make low corruption, a condition of accessing the Fund so that countries like Ghana which has high corruption cannot benefit from its loans and financial assistance,” Mr Ahenu added.
GloMeF is an anti-corruption, human rights and media advocacy Non-governmental Organisation that works to promote the wellbeing of the vulnerable and ordinary citizenry.
Mr Ahenu said he was hopeful that with corruption indexes, being a yardstick for accessing the IMF, successive governments in Ghana and Africa would be proactive enough in fighting the canker which remained the bane of Africa’s development.
In his view: “Ghana is not hit by economic crisis to deserve IMF’s financial support now. The nation’s problem is high corruption and bad economic management systems, and I believe that if they stop granting loans to Ghana and push the nation to tackle its corruption, we can make a headway”.
Mr Ahenu said this when he commented on the World Bank (WB) ‘2025 Policy Notes’ titled, “Transforming Ghana in a Generation”, contained in the new WB’s Report.
According to the report, Ghana has spent 40 years under the IMF programmes, predicting that without reforms, the nation’s growth would plateau around 3.8 percent and thereby delay its attainment of becoming Upper-Middle-Income country by 2050.
“In fact, if the IMF is truly committed to support Ghana’s economic development, then, the Fund should push the government to fix the systemic challenges fueling corruption, instead of approving loans,” he stated.
Mr Ahenu noted that persistent governance challenges, fiscal indiscipline, inefficiencies, and mismanagement continued to obstruct reforms and thereby impeded efforts in the nation’s corruption fight.
He expressed concern about huge revenue losses due to corruption, citing those countries like “Botswana secures not less than 40 percent of her resources in agreements, unlike Ghana which has been mining gold for decades without the corresponding benefits”.
Mr Ahenu regretted the lack of transparency and accountability in the nation’s extractive sector, saying Ghana required openness and clarity on the nation’s share from petroleum resources to also monitor actual quantities of gold, oil, and other natural resources exported annually to prevent underreporting.
He said the nation’s cocoa sector was also threatened, noting that the sector had become competitive with countries like Cameroon, Malaysia, China, and Nigeria making significant strides in their annual cocoa production.
“So, if we aren’t careful Ghana will lose her position as the world’s second-largest cocoa producer,” Mr Ahenu stated.
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