German government is ready to help Ghana to cancel debt with external creditors, but only under certain conditions.
German Ambassador to Ghana, Daniel Krull, has stated this after Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, is expected to lead government delegation to China to plead for the acceptance of the country’s proposal for debt cancellation.
Ghana hopes to restructure $5.7 billion with China holding a third of it amounting to $1.7 billion.
Ofori-Atta told Svenja Schulze, a German Minister that China has committed to a bilateral negotiation.
Responding to the matter, German Ambassador to Ghana while in an interview on Foreign Affairs on JoyNews said
German is willing to help Ghana only if certain conditions are met.
First of all, we (German) insist that those measures that can be taken here in this country have to be taken. The second condition is that, yes we are willing to take our share of responsibility as one of the major bilateral donors to Ghana. But only if all the others join in this effort. And there is a multilateral framework that was set up exactly for these kinds of crises and we urge and try to convince all stakeholders in this process to stick to this agreed framework. It’s the G20 framework.
Ambassador further said;
Let me point to three elements. The biggest loss maker in Ghana is the energy sector.
In this sector alone, each year, 1.5 billion in new debt is piled up. So if that is not solved and you can ask the IMF for $10 billion, you still will not solve the problem in the medium term.
So there has to be an answer in Ghana to the 50 % technical and non-technical losses in the energy sector. If that is not resolved, I don’t see how we can make finding a sustainable solution for the financial problems of the country.
