by Tunji Andrews

Battling with mounting budget deficit and currency freefall, Ghana’s government disclosed on Saturday that it will seek an International Monetary Fund programme as part of efforts to stabilise the economy and halt a slide in the cedi.

Desperate for urgent measures to boost the cedi, Ghana’s president John Mahama had requested his economic team to open talks with the IMF, Reuters reports Finance Minister Seth Terkper as saying. “This programme is not going to be like any other programme that countries have with the IMF… Ghana is currently in a transition as a lower-middle income country. It’s in that context that we will be negotiating with the IMF”, he added.

Ghana’s cedi, re-dominated in July 2007 to a rate of 0.9315 to US$1 – the highest valued currency unit issued by sovereign countries in Africa, has since fallen over 250 percent to 3.3525 as of August 04 2014 with over 40 percent of the fall recorded since January 1 2014 when it stood at 2.3525.

Ghana has embarked on several mechanisms to stem weather its economic storm, last month the West African Country’s Treasury issued a 400 million-cedi ($117 million) three-year domestic bond to support the government’s troubled budget.

Over the weekend the president instructed his economic team to increase domestic gas supplies to the market to provide cheaper fuel for power generation and minimise the burden of oil imports on the currency.

A $500m deal was also announced between Quantum Power Ghana Gas and Golar to build an LNG Terminal. When completed it is projected to save power producers in Ghana more than a quarter of billion dollars annually in fuel cost.