Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, the Vice Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has credited the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) with saving Ghana’s economy from collapse.
The government implemented the DDEP in December 2022 as part of its efforts to address severe economic challenges and ensure long-term debt sustainability.
This initiative was launched in response to the country’s unsustainable debt levels, rising inflation, currency depreciation, and high borrowing costs, which the government attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and global economic shocks, including the Ukraine-Russia war.
In an interview on Peace FM on Wednesday, October 16, Dr. Prempeh, commonly known as NAPO, stated that without the DDEP, Ghana would not have been able to navigate its economic difficulties or secure crucial support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
He emphasised that the DDEP has played a significant role in the country’s recovery, highlighting that the IMF has praised Ghana for the speed and effectiveness of its economic rebound.
“If not for DDEP, our revived economy would have collapsed,” He told host Kwami Sefa-Kayi.
“If they [bondholders] didn’t accept and exchange their bonds, we wouldn’t be able to go through the IMF restructuring. The foreign bondholders would not also have given us the discounts and the write-offs.
“They saw that the Ghanaian [economy] had suffered, so they felt compelled to support Ghana’s economy. I want to say again that if not for the DDEP bondholders who sacrificed and exchanged their bonds, we would have been in a worse situation in this country. IMF wouldn’t have been praising us for the rate of our recovery.
“So, the NPP government must appreciate the DDEP bondholders for their sacrifice for Ghana,” he stated.
