Ghana’s government says it welcomes with great joy the sale of 750 million dollars Eurobonds in London Thursday. The government said the bond sale shows the level of confidence the world financial market reposes in the Ghanaian economy. It said Ghana attained this status through economic prudence and pragmatism. With the Eurobonds sale, Ghana becomes the fourth African country to make it to the world stage after Egypt, Morocco and South Africa.
Kweku Kwarteng is the Ghanaian government’s spokesman on finance and economy. From the capital, Accra he tells reporter Peter Clottey that Ghana’s success can be attributed to hard work.
“This is good news. We have always known that there was confidence in our economy, and that people were willing to invest in our economy. And so this is not entirely surprised, but we are happy about the news,” Kwarteng noted.
He said the government’s pragmatic economic polices are now generating interest from international investors.
“Well, it’s essentially the stability of our economy and the stability of our currency. These have been possible because we have practiced discipline we have spent within our means. But also because the HIPC (Highly Indebted and Poor Countries) initiative, and our commitment to cutting waste has provided confidence in our economy, and has made it possible for us to reduce our debt burden, increase our credit rating, so that people are confident, that if you invested in Ghana, you will not lose out. I think these are the key indicators that have given out such a positive signal to the outside world. And it is something government wants to protect,” he explained.
Kwarteng said the government intends to follow its policy of prudence and pragmatism to further enhance Ghana’s image and attract international investors.
“Well, the way to do that is, as the saying goes, you don’t change a winning plan. The bank of Ghana for instance now is implementing inflation targeting and which is to say, they would monitor government expenditure against what we are getting and implement it to the extend that at the central bank, implement a certain fiscal discipline. We re comfortable with that because in any event we are working closely with the Bank of Ghana to continue adhering to the financial disciplinary principles that have guided our economic management in the last six years and a half. So if you ask whether we want to pursue the policy that has brought us this far, definitely yes, in fact we want to do more,” Kwarteng pointed out.
He said the Central Bank’s move to make Ghana’s bonds available is yielding dividend.
“The Bank of Ghana for instance sought our permission to denominate international bonds in cedis because they recognized that the performance of the cedi against our international trading partners currency has not been bad. And the international investor community would have confidence in the cedi, that is why we are able to denominate bonds now in cedis,” he said.