“The issue of Fitch’s downgrade is unfortunate” – Ofori Atta

It will take Ghana about three years to return to the International Capital Market due to the negative impact of downgrades on the economy by international rating agencies, Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has said.

The three rating agencies, Fitch, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have all downgraded the country’s credit worthiness to junk status.

According to him, the government needed to work on its current economic downgrade and other fiscal measures in order to get back into the market.

“Returning to the International Capital Market is going to take a bit of time. It will take about two to three years before we can be able to work on our ratings before that time. The recent downgrade is very unfortunate”, he said at a press conference in Accra on Wednesday.

Mr Ofori-Atta, said the current downgrade of the country’s rating by some international ratings agencies – Fitch, Moody’s, and Standard and Poor’s would be reversed through policy measures in the next few years, preparing the grounds for Ghana to go back to the International Capital Market.

Giving his opinion on the recent downgrade of Ghana’s economic status by Fitch, Mr Ofori-Atta described the move as very unfortunate and likely to have an adverse effect on Ghana’s bond market.

“The issue of Fitch’s downgrade is unfortunate. In their email to us, they referred to the Bloomberg article that influenced their decision. It sort of further depresses the bonds on the international market and results in additional losses to investors.”

“Once we got downgraded to triple C, we are also expecting that the economic programme that is being worked on which will be the basis for the IMF discussions would help us to come back to some strong matrices so that we will be able to get some ratings revised over that period.

He blamed a recent Bloomberg story suggesting that Ghana was going to restructure its domestic debt as the reason behind the recent downgrade of the country’s credit rating by Fitch.

Fitch Ratings recently, downgraded Ghana’s Long-Term Local – and Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) from ‘CCC’ to ‘CC’.

This is the second time in 2022 that the rating agency has downgraded Ghana’s credit worthiness.

Source: KINGSLEY ASARE || GT