Debt-Hungry Ofori-Atta Insists Ghana Will Continue To Borrow

The Akufo-Addo government still intends to borrow money from the international market despite the huge debt albatross that it has saddled the country with, Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has indicated.

According to the infamous Finance Minister whose private company gets paid commissions for the monies borrowed, Ghana’s return to its borrowing ways will happen in the future because, at the moment, conditions are not right to go borrowing.

“The spread of Ghana’s bonds have widened on the international capital market to about 500 basis due to the country’s growing public debt and this is not the good time to go to the international market to raise capital,” he said when he briefed the press about the developments in the economy.

He said the government would not issue Eurobonds in 2022 and would look within the local bond market as well as rely on alternative instruments such as term loans to raise additional revenue to meet the government’s local and international financial obligations.

This, he says, is due to the creditworthiness crises that the country’s out-of-control public debt has caused to the government.

And Ofori-Atta, the Finance Minister who has almost redefined his Ministry as the Ministry of Borrowing, with his penchant for borrowing, claimed that the current debt conundrum is the fault of everybody, not his government alone.

“We must all take the blame for the country’s growing public debt,” the Finance Minister said.

After inheriting a country with a debt of Ghc120 billion from the Nkrumah era, in 2017, the government has escalated the debt to over Ghc 300 Billion in just five years.

The chief borrowing agent is Ofori-Atta who has made his private company, Databank Financial Services, a so-called bond market advisor to the government so that anytime the country borrows, Ofori-Atta’s private company creams off commissions.

This beneficial arrangement is seen to be what has been driving Ofori-Atta’s insatiable love for borrowing money for the government.

Ghana’s current debt to Gross Domestic Ratio as of the end of November 2021 stood at 81% according to the World Bank. However, Ofori-Atta and his government have been claiming that it is 78.4 percent. Even so, it is still above the international threshold of 60 percent required to be categorised as debt-unsustainable.