Ghana’s economy has not been downgraded by the International Monetary Fund from a lower-middle-income to low-income status, former Finance Minister Seth Terkper has said. 

Mr Terkper, who served under Mr John Mahama’s administration said the classification is normally done by the World Bank, thus, would find it odd for the IMF to have done so. 

“We’ve not been downgraded if you use the main criteria, which is per capita income which is calculated by the World Bank,” Mr Terkper said in an interview on Tuesday, 13 April 2021.

“If you are a middle-income country, you must have a revenue of 17-18% income to GDP. At the moment we’re doing about 11%. We must equip GRA [Ghana Revenue Authority) to perform and raise the revenue from the current 11% to at least 15-17%,” he explained to Accra-based Starr FM. 

Meanwhile, the IMF’s Ghana representative, Dr Albert Touna-Mama, in a tweet, said the downgrade reports attributed to its April Fiscal Monitor Report were “fake news”. 

Currently, the IMF’s fiscal monitor breaks down countries into three groupings: advanced economies; emerging market and middle-income economies; and low-income developing countries.

The classification is not new, Touna-Mama said, and has no bearing on the countries’ access to IMF or World Bank facilities.