Seth Terkper, a former Finance Minister under the erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration has described government’s decision to appeal the recent Moody’s credit rating on Ghana as a step in the right direction.
Speaking to Kwaku Nhyira-Addo on The Asaase Breakfast Show on Thursday (10 February), Terkper said the West have always had myopic way of looking at Africa in many aspects.
“I am not here to say that government should not defend itself, no, because I did. Ministers before me did it, so why not. If the current minister thinks it has not reflected, and it happens and it always happens.
“Are they fair? We are Africans, we are Africans, it is not only financial situation that we think that the world see us unfairly, there are other contest, the job situation, right and in that contest we can talk about blacks over all,” Terkper said.
Watch the full interview below:
Appeal
The government has served notice that it is going to appeal the recent Moody’s credit rating decision on the country because the rating firm omitted “critical data” in doing the assessment.
Moody’s has downgraded Ghana’s Long-Term Issuer and Senior unsecured bond Ratings to Caa1 from B3 and changed the outlook from negative to stable.
According to Moody’s, the downgrade is due to the “increasingly difficult task government faces in addressing the intertwined liquidity and debt challenges, pandemic induced revenue underperformance, tight funding conditions on international markets, materially decreasing governance and institutional strength and inflexibilities in the government budget”.
But a statement issued by the Finance Ministry on Sunday (6 February 2022) said, the recent fiscal consolidation measures as announced by the Finance Minister and the 2022 budget, which is anchored on debt sustainability and a positive primary balance, largely address these concerns.
“The Government of Ghana is therefore completely puzzled by the decision to downgrade Ghana’s credit rating to Caa1, despite the series of progressive engagements we had with the team from Moody’s, the quality of the data supplied, as well as the medium-term economic and fiscal focus of the Government, underpinned by key fiscal consolidation reforms such as the policy decision to cut expenditure by 20%, as recently announced by the Minister for Finance.”
“Perhaps, this singular action by Moody’s confirms the notion held by many that there is an urgent need for reforms in the conduct of rating agencies given their ownership structure and the ramifications that their actions have on Sovereigns especially in Africa. The call for rating reform which was loud during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic must be revived as a matter of urgency,” the statement said.
Fred Dzakpata
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