A former Minister for Finance, Seth Terkper has stated that Ghana’s economy has not been downgraded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from a lower-middle-income to low-income status.
Mr Terkper who served under John Mahama’s administration said the classification is normally done by the World Bank.
He said he will find it odd for the IMF to have done so as being speculated by individuals on various media platforms.
“We’ve not been downgraded if you use the main criteria, which is per capita income which is calculated by the World Bank,” Mr Terkper said in an interview with Accra-based Starr FM yesterday.
The former Finance Minister pointed out that, “If you are a middle-income country, you must have a revenue of 17-18% income to GDP. At the moment we are doing about 11%. We must equip GRA (Ghana Revenue Authority) to perform and raise the revenue from the current 11% to at least 15-17%”
Meanwhile, the IMF’s Ghana representative, Dr Albert Touna-Mama, in a tweet, said the downgrade reports attributed to its April Fiscal Monitor Report were “fake news”.
Currently, the IMF’s fiscal monitor breaks down countries into three groupings: advanced economies; emerging market and middle-income economies; and low-income developing countries.
According to Touna-Mama, the classification is not new and therefore has no bearing on countries’ access to IMF or World Bank facilities.
