ACCRA, Jan. 4 — The Ghanaian government expects a newly approved loan of 360 million U.S. dollars from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to boost its foreign reserves, Finance Minister Mohammed Amin Adam has said. During a monthly press briefing on Tuesday, the minister expressed his confidence that the new disbursement would help stabilize the foreign exchange market. The minister said Ghana’s satisfactory performance under the reforms has led to improvements in the external sector, with significant improvements in current accounts and trade accounts, while the gross international reserves (GIR) data significantly outperformed initial projections. “Ghana continues to build strong reserves with the GIR reaching 7.7 billion dollars by the end of October,” he added. On Monday, the IMF announced its executive board’s approval for the third review of Ghana’s economic reforms, authorizing the immediate release of an additional loan of 360 million dollars to strengthen the West African country’s reform implementation. “Ghana’s performance under the IMF-supported program has been generally satisfactory. All quantitative performance criteria and indicative targets for the third review were met,” the IMF said. The West African exporter of cocoa, gold, and crude oil has been implementing reforms since May 2023, with the support of a loan of 3 billion dollars from the IMF to revamp its economy from the multiple challenges, including ballooning public debts, high inflation, a volatile foreign exchange market, and increasing cost of living.
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