The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG), has stated that it can safely deduced governments continuous resorting to the IMF is not a sustainable way of dealing with the country’s economic problems.
UTAG recounted that governments between 1966 to 2015 has sent Ghana to the IMF sixteen times to seek support to address the country’s economic problems. UTAG noted that looking at the country’s history with IMF and how their support has turned out, it is about time a homegrown policy is looked at.
“Indeed within the fourth Republic and over the last 30 years this will be the sixth time the country is going to the IMF for support. This means that, on the average, Ghana seeks the support of the IMF every five years to address its economic problems”.
Government has however been cautioned that, the IMF engagement as has commenced should not negatively impact on UTAG members, as IMF programmes results in fiscal discipline aimed at cutting down on excessive expenditures by government.
UTAG also says it is ready to “provide technical backstopping support services to the government to analyze the policy options and develop the programme for effective and efficient engagement with the IMF”.
“Typically, an IMF programme may result in fiscal discipline which aims at cutting down on excessive expenditures by the government and may help the Government to focus on revenue generation to propel the economy to a path of steady growth.”
“We wish to state that the Government of Ghana must ensure that the conditions subsequent to the support will not disadvantage the Conditions of Service of Labour Unions, including UTAG. In particular, UTAG would not tolerate any IMF conditionality that negatively affects the existing agreements between Government and UTAG to improve the Conditions of Service of our members” the statement ended.