Government met only 3 out of 11 structural benchmarks, but taken strong actions to address rest – IMF

The government met only three out of eleven structural benchmarks (SB) of the International Monetary Fund due between January and May 2025.

According to the IMF Country Report on Ghana, some missed structural benchmarks were implemented with delay.

It, however, indicated that strong actions have been taken in recent months to address delays in the structural reforms.

It mentioned that the quarterly electricity tariff adjustments (quarterly SB starting from end-January 2025) resumed only in April 2025 due to delays in appointing a new board of the energy sector regulator (PURC), while the publication of the audit of Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG)’s collections and uses (end-January 2025 SB) was achieved in February 2025 and covered a longer period than mandated by program conditionality.

“The full integration of Ghana Electronic Procurement System (GHANEPS) with GIFMIS, an end-December 2024 structural benchmark, was achieved in May 2025 (prior action). The authorities completed the forward-looking overarching restructuring plan for NIB in May (prior action) and the government has recapitalised NIB to ensure a non-negative Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) (prior action)—and to fully comply with the minimum CAR of 13.0% (without forbearance), ahead of the end-2025 timeline”, it continued.

Against this backdrop, the authorities have implemented—ahead of schedule—two end-September 2025 SBs: amending the fiscal responsibility framework and adopting a strategy to restructure Ghana’s electricity company— including opening operations to private sector participation”, the Fund stressd.

Meanwhile the Fund, said all end-December 2024 performance criteria (PCs) and most indicative targets (ITs) were met, except for the IT on accumulation of net payables.

“The latter was missed by 3.9% of Gross Domestic Product, reflecting the large accumulation of payables from MDAs outside Ghana’s public integrated financial management information system (GIFMIS) ahead of the elections”.

Since then, it pointed out that bold corrective measures have been adopted to strengthen spending commitment controls and compliance with the Public Financial Management Act.

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