Moody's Rating: How Can You Sit In Your Office And Downgrade Us - Dep. Minister Fumes

A Deputy Finance Minister, Lawyer John Kumah, believes there is a grand scheme to force Ghana into accepting financial intervention from the International Monetary Fund.

To John Kumah, the assessment done by international economic ratings firm, Moody’s, cannot be said to be accurate since no representative has been to town to have a first-hand information about the country's economy.

Moody’s has downgraded  Ghana’s long-term issuer and senior unsecured debt ratings to Caa1 from B3.

Ghana’s outlook has also been moved to stable from negative.

Moody’s projects that Ghana’s government debt ratios will continue to deteriorate in the next few years with extremely weak debt affordability significantly constraining policymaking.

Moody’s estimates that government debt ended 2021 at 80% of GDP while interest payments alone consumed half of government revenue that year (positioning Ghana with the second largest ratio among Moody’s rated sovereigns).

But speaking on Okay Fm's Ade Akye Abia programme, he explained that Moody has no credibility to disclose or rate Ghana's financial standing because they have not even visited the country to understudy the country's financial and fiscal policy.

".....they lack knowledge about the country's economy.....How can you sit behind your computer somewhere in your office and decide to rate a country you have not even visited and have no knowledge about our financial standing? he quizzed.

To him, the country needs to be patted on the back for the way it has handled its affairs relative to the pandemic.
 
"Covid 19 has really destabilized a lot of country's financial standing. Even the UK is reeling under serious economic hardship so if Ghana has been able to manage its economy properly in these hard Covid times, you cannot give us a negative rating," John Kumah argued.

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Source: Isaac Kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline/[email protected]