By Francis Ntow
Tema (G/A), Sept 17, GNA – Mr Jacob Assa, a Senior Economist and Strategic Advisor of the Regional Bureau for Africa for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has advised government to build stronger domestic capital market for sustainable economic development.
He said this was necessary as Ghana’s transition into a middle-income country made it difficult to access concessional financing, while going to the international capital market was often costly.
Mr Assa said those conditions required that Ghana “builds stronger domestic financial markets,” to help increase borrowing at reasonable rates, build trust among financial players, provide a more long-term investment and reduce market speculations.
A well-developed domestic capital markets enable companies to raise capital and investors to allocate resources efficiently within a country, creating access to long-term, local-currency finance, supporting entrepreneurship, innovation, and employment.
Responding to a question posed by the Ghana News Agency on the sidelines of the opening of a two-day national workshop on strengthening sovereign credit ratings in Tema, on Thursday, September 11, he urged the government to prioritise creating a robust domestic capital market.
The workshop was organised by UNDP in partnership with the government of Ghana and the government of Japan under the Credit Ratings and Development Programme and being implemented in Cote D’Ivoire and South Africa.
It was attended by technical people from various institutions whose works are related with rating activities, including the Ministry of Finance, Bank of Ghana, Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), Ghana Investment Promotion Authority (GIPC) and the Ghana National Petroleum Commission (GNPC).
“We believe it’s not enough to have a good economy. It’s important to tell a strong narrative about your economy, give the right data and improve coordination between government ministries talking to the CRAs,” Mr Assa stated.
He said the workshop was to help build the capacity of Ghanaians and urged the participants to apply the skills to do a better job by telling Ghana’s positive story to the investment community about the country’s creditworthiness.
Mr Edward Ampratwum, Head of Inclusive Growth and Accountable Governance, UNDP Ghana, explained that the training was to build the technical skills of the stakeholders responsible for telling Ghana’s story in credit ratings.
He noted that having observed the dominance of externals in the credit ratings space, UNDP came up with the training to support the country by providing technical people with domestic understanding of what it will take for credit ratings to be done.
He said such knowledge would enable them to question the methodologies, when necessary, improve transparency and package national information for better ratings outcomes.
“Ultimately, this is to ensure that the cost at which African governments borrow is reasonable and understood by their technical people,” he said, encouraging the participants to take the learnings into the field.
“If we’re able to get a good grip of credit ratings, the borrowing cost for Ghana is going to go down and there will be more resources available for the country to meet its priorities,” Mr Ampratwum stated.
GNA
Edited by Christian Akorlie