Ghana’s return to IMF is bad news – GUTA

The Ghana Union Traders Association (GUTA) has called on the government to pay critical attention to value for money on contracts it awards and also avoid scandalous expenditure if it really wants to come out from its economic quagmire.

President of GUTA, Dr. Joseph Obeng bemoaned how the state pays double or three times the amount paid by private entities for the same project or services.

“The kind of expenditure we are making as a country and some of the social interventions we are implementing in the country are just so much of a drain to the economy. This is the reason why GUTA is saying that the government should go back and look at the things that are urgently important and cut down our expenses” He emphasized that these are the areas that must be looked at in order to build a strong economy and develop the country.

He was reacting to President Akufo-Addo’s directive to Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to officially engage the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a balance of payment support on 3FM Sunrise Morning Show, Monday 4 July, 2022.

Mr. Obeng further argued that the restoration of the Teacher and Nursing Trainees Allowances was not necessary or critical because everybody was catering for himself or herself at the tertiary level. He observed that Ghana has been to IMF on numerous occasions but has not learned any useful lessons all this while hence there isn’t any need to go there again if previous engagements have been fruitless.

“If we keep going round in the circus, then it means we have failed as a state. I don’t want to believe that we have failed as a state” he mentioned.

According to the leader of Ghanaian traders, going to the IMF is scandalous, and it simply tells us that we have to be fiscally disciplined with the management of our economy. The expenditure patterns we have here, the way we do not tailor our resources to our needs and all that.

GUTA predicts that the IMF is simply coming to tell Ghana the same things that we know already. Thus, we have to be prudent with the management of resources and can’t one feel scandalized about it? That is why we have been saying that even before we went to the IMF, we should have used our home grown solution to solve our problems.

“I haven’t seen any country that has been successful with an IMF program other than using their own home grown solution, and it tells us to tailor made our solutions and not just do things for just political expediency” GUTA President asserted.

Source: 3news.com|Ghana