Akufo-Addo going to IMF is not victory, it’s a day of sadness – Joe Jackson

Chief Operations Officer at Dalex Finance, Mr Joe Jackson, has said the conditions that will be given by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to Ghana will cause pains.

He explained that the country cannot get out of the situation without going through pains to implement the yet-to-be determined conditions.

Speaking in an in interview with TV3’s Martin Asiedu-Darteh on the News @10 on Friday June 1, Mr Jackson said the IMF will definitely tell the government to cut expenditure.

“We all expect the IMF to say, you have to cut expenditure significantly. When those proposals come, where will the expenditure cut be? There may be some route to begin, I am prepared to cut expenditure in this area and not in that area.

“Some of the options may be politically more palatable than others. Whatever it is, there is going to be a lot of pain. You can’t get out of the situation we are in today without pain.”

He further stated that the situation must be very dire for a government that indicated several times that it would not go to the IMF, to finally decide to do so.

“In fact, if you think about it clearly, this government knew exactly what the political fallout will be of going to the IMF, they had said categorically over and over again that we will not go to the IMF. They had postured and said with the e-levy, we don’t even need to go to the IMF.

“Of course, all these hasn’t happened so what it should tell each one of us is this, the situation might be dire, the situation must be tough, the situation mist be so tough that we are prepared to take the political fallouts because there is no other option.

“Today is not a day of victory for those of us who said the government should be going to the IMF long time ago, today is a day of sadness because today marks reality that the situation is really tough,” Mr Jackson said.

On Friday July 1 President Akufo-Addo gave instruction to Mr Ofori-Atta to commence the engagements with the IMF following a telephone conversation between the President and the IMF Managing Director, Miss Kristalina Georgieva, conveying Ghana’s decision to engage with the Fund.

The Ministry of Information announced this in a statement on Friday July 1

—3news.com