At a meeting on May 17, 2023, in Washington, D.C., the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) unanimously agreed to the $3 billion bailout for Ghana. On the day the bailout was approved, $600 million of the $3 billion loan was disbursed, and for the remainder of the three-year program, $350 million would be disbursed every six months.
The Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government is facing criticism over the $3 billion rescue deal it negotiated two days after the IMF program was approved.
The deal that the Ghanaian government and its finance minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, and other parties reached during their negotiations for the bailout has been compared to wickedness. According to experts, including University of Ghana professor Godfred Bokpin, the agreement will make the difficulties facing regular Ghanaians worse. The $3 billion bailout agreement purportedly contained the following terms, among others:
- Removal of Value Added Tax (Vat) exemptions.
- Reformation of the Corporate Income Tax (CIT) by phasing out tax holidays and exemptions.
- Reducing Customs exemptions.
- progressivity in personal income taxes – income taxes will be going up.
- Automatically adjusting fuel levies by exchange rate movement and inflation.
- Quarterly tariff adjustment including electricity and water tariffs.
- Government can employ only 0.5 per cent of the current labour force.
- A limit to the rate at which the government can increase the salaries of public sector workers.
- A tax-to-GDP ratio of 18 per cent before the end of the three IMF programme.
- A second debt restructuring exercise – Domestic Debt Exchange Programme “Part II”.
