Open your eyes at BoG – Jinapor tells IMF Supervisor

The Member of Parliament for the Yapei Kusawgu constituency, John Jinapor, has admonished Leonard Chumo, who has been appointed as a financial adviser to the Bank of Ghana by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to be extremely vigilant.

Commenting on the Finance Minister’s address to Parliament on the state of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme on Thursday, February 16, Mr Jinapor said Mr Chumo must scrutinise all documents provided to him at the Central Bank.

“I welcome Mr Chumo but please open your eyes at the Bank of Ghana…read and scrutinise the documents,” Mr Jinapor said.

Funded by Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the resident adviser is expected to provide technical assistance and help build the capacity of the banking supervision function in the country.

A press release from the Bank of Ghana indicated that “the Adviser’s placement is a continuation of cooperation in this area between the Bank of Ghana, the IMF, and SECO, that started as early as in 2015 and had already seen the assignment of a previous Adviser until 2018.”

According to the Bank of Ghana, the previous adviser contributed to some achievements which make the current assignment eminent.

Ghana is currently before the IMF seeking a $3 billion bailout to support the country’s ailing economy.

The Domestic Debt restructuring programme is part of the conditions before the board of the Bretton Wood institution considers Ghana’s proposal. Ghana in December reached a staff-level agreement with the IMF paving the way for the $3 billion bailout.

The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, on Thursday, confirmed that all pensioners who failed to tender their old bonds for new ones under the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) have been exempted from the programme.

Addressing Parliament, Mr Ofori-Atta said the pensioners have nothing to worry about adding that all their coupons and principals will be honoured when maturity is due.

He added that an official letter has been written to the pensioner bondholders who did not sign onto the Programme of their exemption from the exercise.