But for a third successive time, the national finances have gone off track before elections, forcing the winner to confront a fiscal crunch. The fiscal blowout in the 2012 election year was largely due to pay rises for civil servants. The $918 million IMF programme of 2015 was designed to stabilise state finances and the wider economy. My feeling is Ghana for the time being is dead money," said Uday Patnaik, head of emerging debt at Legal and General Investment Management. Exotix Partners, an investment firm for frontier and illiquid markets, downgraded its recommendation on some of Ghana's debt to hold from buy, pending the government's response to its fiscal situation.

Source: The Star February 15, 2017 13:18 UTC