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Reports available to The Herald is that, Ghana has already begun defaulting on its debt obligations.
It has been disclosed that officials of HSBC Holdings plc, a British multinational universal bank and financial services holding company, are in town to take their debt repayment.
“We have cedis at BoG, but we don’t have dollars to pay them, so we desperately need the $1 billion loan passed otherwise we will default in two weeks”, a person familiar with the matter hinted this paper.
HSBC Holdings, is the largest bank in Europe by total assets, with US$2.953 trillion as of December 2021.
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Meanwhile, the Minority in Parliament, has shot down the approval of a 1 billion dollar syndicated loan at the committee meeting, despite IMF advice that it should be approved to prevent the economy from grinding to a halt.
According to the Ranking Member of the Finance Committee, Ato Forson, their decision was due to the fact that some concerns, including defects in the document raised by the minority with regards to the loan, have not been addressed.
He insists that until the right things are done, the minority side, will not approve the one billion dollar syndicated loan despite the IMF plea.
Speaking in an interview, he said, “…we met as a committee for us to consider and approve two tranches of loans. We have considered them in good faith but we have lingering concerns. First of all, we believe that the document before us has some fundamental defects because what is in the memorandum to parliament and what is in the loan agreement have some difference in the sense that in one breath, we were called upon to approve a loan of 750 million dollars but what is in the agreement has two trenches, tranche A and tranche b, one is in dollars and one in euros. So that will mean that parliament would have to amend what was brought to us.”
When asked why they ignored the advice of the IMF, he said they only take advice from foreign partners and not instructions.
“Parliament does not take instructions from our foreign partners, we take advice from them, advice can either be accepted or rejected it depends on the circumstances on the day,” Ato Forson added.
