COVID-19, Russia-Ukraine War negatively affected Ghana’s economy – IMF Chief

The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva has attributed Ghana’s economic struggles to the COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War.

The IMF Chief said the Ghanaian economy was thriving and making positive gains until COVID-19 struck, changing the economic outlook and was further exacerbated by the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War in February 2022.

Ghana is  currently engaging the Fund for a $3 billion loan facility to complement its economic mix which was worsened by the two events.

At a roundtable discussion on the sideline of the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Miss Georgieva said the Fund was under pressure to extend bailouts to struggling member countries due to the damage done by COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine War.

She said the Fund was committed to reciprocating the over $650 billion support it gave out to struggling member countries sometime last year.

“We recognize that we are in a world in which exogenous shocks more often than before, hit innocent bystanders. Ghana has been working toward good policies for quite some time and then COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war hit and that significantly undermined Ghana.”

President Nana Akufo-Addo on the other hand bemoaned the neglect of Africa in the global geopolitical and economic decision-making in times of such pandemics and appealed for special attention to cushion Africans.

“We see that from the latest crisis that has overcome humanity, thus COVID-19 and also the war between Russia and Ukraine, we [Ghana] have been left to fend for ourselves. Even access to vaccines during the pandemic became a major problem for the African continent, and we have seen it again with the war in Eastern Europe.”