By Maxwell Akalaare Adombila and Christian Akorlie
ACCRA (Reuters) -The International Monetary Fund’s executive board approved a $3 billion, three-year extended credit for Ghana, allowing for an immediate disbursement of about $600 million, the IMF said on Wednesday.
The rest will be disbursed in tranches every six months following programme reviews, the IMF said. It detailed the decision on a page on its website that later became inaccessible.
Three senior Ghanaian officials told Reuters earlier on Wednesday that the programme had been approved.
An IMF spokesperson and Ghana’s finance ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Two other sources familiar with the process said the IMF agreement marked an important step for Ghana, but cautioned that authorities there faced long negotiations with creditors, pointing to Zambia, where a similar process has been mired in delays.
Ghana’s official sector creditors formed a committee co-chaired by China and France and agreed to debt restructuring talks, the Paris Club of creditors said last week.
This paved the way for a sign-off on the IMF loan, which was agreed at staff level in December.
“The next step is for the Official Creditor Committee… to agree with the authorities the specific modalities of how official creditors intend to deliver debt relief consistent with Fund-program parameters,” the IMF said on its website, adding that authorities were also engaging with private creditors to seek relief on their external debt.
Ghana faces a debt overhaul after its already strained finances buckled under economic fallout from COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It is negotiating its international debt rework under the Group of 20’s Common Framework platform and completed a domestic debt exchange this year.
Some $5.4 billion of debt to official creditors has been earmarked for restructuring, according to government data, as well as $14.6 billion owed to private overseas creditors.
Zambia, the first African country to default in the COVID-19 era, secured an IMF loan in September 2022 and still has not agreed debt restructuring terms with creditors.
Analysts expect Ghana’s process to be faster and smoother since China holds a smaller proportion of Ghana’s debt. China is Zambia’s largest bilateral creditor and has been accused of delaying that country’s debt restructuring, which it denies.
(Reporting by Maxwell Akalaare Adombila, Christian Akorlie, Andrea Shalal and Rachel Savage; Writing by Nellie Peyton and Anait Miridzhanian; Editing by James Macharia Chege, David Gregorio and John Stonestreet)
