The minister of Finance, Dr Mohammed Amin Adam has revealed that the implementation of the Domestic Dept Exchange Programme (DDEP) has amazingly saved Ghana $12 billion.
Dr Mohammed Adam made this declaration on Wednesday, October 23 during a panel discussion at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group.
The meeting was centered on the challenges faced by the periphery countries in managing debt, which is a problematic topic for many nations struggling with their finances, heightened by global economic uncertainties and other external shocks.
The Finance Minister in delivering his speech, stressed that the DDEP has been an active policy in addressing Ghana’s debt load, thereby creating a more sustainable economic environment.
According to Dr. Amin Adam, the DDEP, which was launched in December 2022, was a massive success that laid the foundation for larger debt reformation efforts.
He also explained that the program needs domestic shareholders to exchange their existing bonds for new ones with different terms, a critical move meant to reduce the government’s debt service duties.
The Finance Minister disclosed that the NPP government administration is presently working to reform about $2.7 billion with its commercial creditors.
“The DDEP was a great success and we followed that with the restructuring of our bilateral debt, which was also very successful and this led to a significant savings of about $2.8 billion and then following this, the restructuring of our Eurobonds which is about $13 billion, which was concluded in the first week of this month which is another great success.
“The benefits we have derived from this so far include an outright debt cancellation of about $5 billion and another debt service relief of about $4.3 billion and so between the bilateral creditors and the Eurobonds, we are talking about savings of about $12 billion and we think this is a great success and we are still having an outstanding restructuring with our commercial creditors involving about $2.7 billion and we are working very hard to conclude that.”
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM/Jasmine Adjei Anyetei
