Ghana's External US$2bn

After Ghana's external debt dwindled drastically from $6.2 billion to $2 billion as announced by the Governor of Bank of Ghana (BoG), the Business Chronicle's calculations indicates that each Ghanaian owes about US$100, estimated at ¢930,000.00 multilaterally.
Each Ghanaian used to owe about US$310 (¢2,883,000) when the debt was US$6.2 billion.
The debt reduction has been possible due to Ghana reaching the HIPC completion point in July 2004, and the subsequent debt cancellations by multilateral organisations and donor countries worth US$4.2 billion.
Ghana qualified for multilateral debt release by the ADB, World Bank and IMF, and a further debt cancellation is expected to reduce Ghana's foreign debts to US$1.5 billion by the end of 2006.
Currently, total external debt stock stands at US$2 billion, which translates to about ¢18.6 trillion making up the external debt stock alone; as such each of the 20 million Ghanaians may have to pay ¢930,000 each if the debt were to be paid tomorrow.
If the internal debt is added, the number may reach an alarming level. The external debts were owed to multilateral creditors: the Paris Club, Non-Paris Club and the rest being components of commercial loans.
Ghana had benefited tremendously from the enhanced HIPC initiative.
These are positive indicators pointing to the fact that the debt cancellation will eventually be a reality. Ghana had already signed bilateral debt relief agreements with Sweden and the USA, resulting in debt cancellation of US$20.34 million and US$4.6million respectively.
Ghana's overall political and economic stability has made Ghana an interesting destination for foreign investors, although it has still not attracted the investments that are required to propel the GDP into an accelerated growth.
The macroeconomic results for the year 2005 were encouraging; as GDP grew by 5.8% in 2005, inflation was kept at a moderate level and is currently at 14.8% despite significant fuel price increases in 2005.
Estimated fiscal deficit for 2005 was 2.2 % of the GDP, and BoG's foreign currency reserves covered 3.7 months of import value.
Minimum wage has also increased from 13,000 (US$1.48) to 16,000 (about US$1.72).
Due to the good macroeconomic indicators as well as political stability, the rating of Ghana by international rating agencies, Standard & Poors/Fitch, has been upgraded to a B+ and the assessment of the security of export guarantees by Hermes/OECD from level 7 to level 6.
Prospects for 2006 look promising and the Government of Ghana must set an ambitious agenda for further economic development, envisaging Ghana to grow at above 8% for 2006 and must help reach the middle-income status by 2015.