IMF bailout: ‘It’s like asking a dad to resign from his children’ – Ofori-Atta on resignation clamours

IMF bailout: ‘It’s like asking a dad to resign from his children’ – Ofori-Atta on resignation clamours.

Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta has said asking him to resign for changing his mind regarding going to the International Monetary Fund is “not a very good question”.

“It’s almost like telling a father to resign from his children because he’s changed his mind”, he told journalists at the governing New Patriotic Party’s ongoing national delegates conference on Saturday, 16 July 2022.

“There are times that decisions have to be made for the survival of a country and, therefore, in circumstances such as COVID or Ukraine war occur, which are not typical, it does change the environment”, he noted.

In February this year, Mr Ofori-Atta said Ghana was a “proud” nation of “strong” people with the capability to find her own solutions to problems and, thus, will not run to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help.

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Speaking at the third in a series of town hall meetings in the Northern regional capital of Tamale in February, Mr Ofori-Atta said: “… I can tell you, as my colleague Deputy Minister said, we are not going to the IMF; whatever we do, we are not; the consequences are dire, we are a proud nation, we have the resources, we have the capacity”.

“Don’t let anybody tell you – like when Joshua, Caleb and the 10 others went to spy on the Promised Land and only two of them came to say that, ‘We can do it’, and the 10 went around the community murmuring, ‘You can’t; da da da da da da’; we are not people of short sight and we had to move on, so, let’s think of us as who we are: a proud, strong people, the shining star of Africa and we have the capacity to do what we want to do if only we can speak by one language and ensure that we burden-share in the issues ahead”.

The government, however, recently made a U-turn and resorted to the Bretton Wood institution for help.

On the back of that, former President John Mahama asked Mr Ofori-Atta to resign.

Similar calls were also made by some MPs of the minority caucus in parliament.