President Akufo Addo has accused international rating agencies of unfairly and recklessly downgrading Ghana and other African economies.
According to him, doing this at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian/Ukraine war is unfair and wicked.
Speaking at the official opening of Afreximbank’s Annual Meetings in Accra, he said such a decision has impacted negatively their economies.
This is because Ghana and some Africans cannot borrow from the international capital market to finance their projects.
President Akufo Addo believed that the difficult moment in the country’s economy was compounded by the downgrades making it one of the most difficult times in the history of the country post-independence.
“I can comfortably and convincingly say this as the AU champion for African financial institutions and leader of a country, which recently had to deal with one of the most difficult periods in his post-independence history, difficulties which were exacerbated by the reckless behaviour of rating agencies that engaged in pro-cyclical downgrades shutting Ghana out of capital markets and turning it liquidity crisis into a solvency crisis”.
“The country which had become the favourite child of bondholders, and had successfully gone to market at the height of the pre-Covid downturn was suddenly shut out of international capital markets” he noted”.
He, however, praised Afrieximbank for its timely support that took the country out of many challenges.
“Afrieximbank under its counter-cyclical response mechanism provided timely support to help Ghana navigate the macroeconomic management challenges worsened by Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine in an orderly manner when suddenly, we realized we were alone”.