Finance Minister Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson has taken a swipe at the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) handling of Ghana’s International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, accusing the previous government of poor execution and a lack of genuine commitment.
In a pointed remark during an interview on Joy News on Thursday, July 24, following the presentation of the 2025 Mid-Year Budget Review to Parliament, Dr. Forson dismissed the NPP’s record on IMF engagements.
“I don’t know of one [programme the NPP did]. I don’t know of one. They may have started but never yielded results—and in fact, I don’t know one that they meant well by starting. They meant yes, we have to do it because we are on an IMF programme, so they were doing it wishy-washy. Nothing really materialised from whatever programme they were implementing,” he said.
Dr. Forson, who now heads Ghana’s economic management team under President John Mahama’s administration, said the NPP’s half-hearted implementation of key reforms led to economic setbacks the current government is now working to reverse.
“I am not impressed. I have never been impressed with their economic performance because they could have done better than what we inherited,” he stated.
His criticism echoed similar concerns raised during the Mid-Year Budget Review, where he pointed to assessments from the IMF itself to underscore the extent of economic decline under the previous administration.
“An IMF programme which had derailed and completely gone off-track, with key targets missed, putting our economic recovery programme in jeopardy. In the words of the Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, Mr. Bo Li, ‘the programme had deviated substantially from its targets by the close of 2024,’” Dr. Forson told Parliament.
He, however, disclosed that the Mahama-led government had restored confidence and direction to Ghana’s IMF programme, with the Fund’s Executive Board successfully completing the fourth review earlier this month.
The approval, he noted, has unlocked an immediate disbursement of $367 million to Ghana.
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