Ghana will need $12 billion in the next three years to invest in the economy to promote the growth of the country, the Finance Minister, Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, has disclosed.
To this end, he has appealed to the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) to provide concessional loans to Ghana and finance Public-Private-Partnership projects in the country.
Dr Adam disclosed this during the launch business meeting with some senior officials of BADEA on the sidelines of the 50th anniversary meeting of the organisation in Ghana.
He said the objective of the government was to achieve the pre-COVID-19 growth of seven per cent from the current 2.9 per cent.
BADEA with its headquarters in Khartoum in Sudan is an independent international finance institution established in 1974 and commenced its developmental activities in 1975.
As part of the programme, the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority (GIPC) briefed the team about the investment opportunities that exist in the country.
Dr Adam in his remarks said Ghana recorded high public debt in recent times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which occasioned the need for the government to borrow to save lives and keep the economy running.
According to the Minister, the high public spending during the COVID-19 era led to the soaring of public debt and budget deficit which at a point was between 13 and 14 per cent, and hence the need for the government to seek International Monetary Fund support to restore macroeconomic stability and tame the growing public debt.
Dr Adam said the IMF programme had helped to bring back macroeconomic stability to the country and the economy was recovering faster than anticipated, adding that the economy last year grew at 2.9 per cent higher the target of 1.5 per cent and in the first quarter of this year grew at 4.7 per cent against the target of 3.1 per cent.
Dr Adam said inflation had trended down from 53 per cent the previous year to about 22 per cent currently and the Cedi was currently stable against its international peers.
The Finance Minister said as part of efforts to boost the country’s economic recovery, the government had launched the Small and Medium-scale Enterprise (SME) Growth and Opportunity Programme and intend to raise $600 million from private sources to support SMEs and called for BADEA’s support for the programme.
Dr Adam called for a Saudi-Ghana Business Summit to be organised in Riyadh in October, and stressed the need for BADEA to strengthen its partnership with Ghana which was started in the 1970s.
The Chief Operating Officer in charge of Public Sector of BADEA, Diab Karrar, said Ghana and BADEA established a relationship in the 1970s.
He said BADEA had so far invested in about 42 projects with total investment of $511 million and pledged BADEA’s continued commitment to strengthen its partnership with Ghana.
The Chief Executive Officer of Saudi Fund for Development, Dr Sultan Abdulrahman, said his outfit was supporting 11 projects in the country and would continue to support education and health to propel the development of the country.
The Deputy Chief Executive Officer of GIPC, Mr Yaw Amoateng Afriyie, said the objective of his outfit was to attract $70 billion worth of Foreign Direct Investment into the country in the short to medium term.
He said Ghana abounded in numerous investment opportunities and urged BADEA to take advantage of that to diversify their investment portfolios.
BY KINGSLEY ASARE