The leader of a team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that  visited Accra to  discuss the third review of Ghana’s financial and economic program supported by the IMF’s Extended Credit Facility (ECF) says  questions  with regards to certain elements of the legislations recently passed by Parliament remain outstanding.

Joël Toujas-Bernaté on friday released a statement after the team visited Accra from August 29-September 2, 2016.

The mission met with H.E. President John Dramani Mahama; Finance Minister Seth Terkper; Bank of Ghana Governor Dr. Abdul-Nashiri Issahaku; and other senior officials.

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After what he describeA as a "high-quality and constructive discussions”, Mr. Toujas-Bernaté in the release said:

"“Following recent progress in implementing the IMF-supported program, including the passing by Parliament of several important legislations, we had constructive discussions with the authorities during this week on a few outstanding issues. The discussions focused mainly on updating the macroeconomic projections, firming up the fiscal outlook for 2016, and ascertaining that financial pressures faced by the main State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in the energy sector will not pose additional risks to the central government budget".

However Joël Toujas-Bernaté  believes certain elements of the legislations passed by parliament still need to be looked at in order to facilitate the programm.

“Understandings were reached on many of these issues. Outstanding questions remain with regards to certain elements of the legislations recently passed by Parliament and discussions will continue," the release read.

Parliament,earlier this month, passed the Bank of Ghana (BoG) Amendment Bill to allow the central bank to finance the government's budget deficit up to 5 percent of the previous year's revenue.

The IMF had demanded that the central bank be barred from deficit financing,with a window of 2% – 3% of BOG financing for liquidity management, but Ghana argues the objective of the amendment is to significantly strengthen the Central Bank’s functional autonomy, governance and ability to respond to banking sector crises.

By Abdul Malik/ghanaguardian.com