Ghana will save 110 million dollars a year as a result of opting to participate in the Highly Indebted Poor Countriesinitiative, Finance Minister Yaw Osafo Maafo said Wednesday.
Debt service payments will average about 240 million dollars for each of the next three years, compared with about 350 million dollars for each of the previous three years, Osafo Maafo told a news conference.
The relief will come under the HIPC initiative of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which slashes poor countries' debt in the framework of poverty alleviation programs and economic reforms, following Accra's decision to join in March.
Debt savings in the longer term are expected to increase to an average of over 170 million dollars per year, Osafo Maafo said.
"The total stock of the country's external debt in nominal terms was about six billion dollars" at the end of the last fiscal year, he said.
The minister also announced that the governor of the central Bank of Ghana, Kwabena Duffuor, has resigned for "health and other reasons" at the end of his term of office on August 1.
The government will appoint a replacement, he said. |
