A high-powered government delegation will visit China later this week to convince authorities there to accept Ghana’s proposal for debt cancellation with the Paris club.
It is part of the government’s restructuring of its external debts.
Ghana is hoping to restructure $5. 7 billion with China holding a third of it amounting to 1.7 billion dollars.
Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, who is leading the delegation, told Svenja Schulze, a German Minister that China has committed to a bilateral negotiation.
In view of that, he is hopeful a deal can be reached to enable Ghana to present her case before the International Monetary Fund (IMF) board.
“The big elephant in the room is China as in how they will comport themselves in the comparability of treatment because China wants to do bilateral. We would be visiting China by the end of the week to really discuss how they can envelope as quickly as possible,” he said.
The German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation, Svenja Schulze, says her country will assist Ghana to get fair treatment at the Paris club.
Ghana is currently restructuring its debt both domestically and externally in order to access support from the IMF.
On the back of this, Ghana’s bilateral lenders are discussing the formation of an official creditor committee, a first step needed to engage in debt relief talks for the country.
The Paris Club of creditor nations has contacted other bilateral creditors, such as China and India, to engage on forming the committee and deciding who would chair it.
In January, Ghana became the fourth nation to apply to the common framework platform, an initiative of the Group of 20 major economies launched in 2020 to streamline debt restructuring efforts for poorer countries.
China is Ghana’s single biggest bilateral creditor with $1.7 billion of debt, while Ghana owes $1.9 billion to Paris Club members, according to data from the Institute of International Finance.