Ghana’s IMF exit will mean little without cheaper loans for local businesses - TUC

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) says Ghana’s economic recovery may not be sustained unless the government reforms the financial sector to make credit cheaper and more accessible to local businesses.

The Deputy Secretary-General of the TUC, Kwabena Nyarko Otoo, in a radio interview with Accra based Joy FM on Thursday [May 21, 2026], said this while reacting to Ghana’s completion of the Extended Credit Facility programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

He said although the country continued to record economic growth, much of the wealth generated was not being retained within the local economy because foreign investors dominated major sectors while Ghanaian businesses struggled to access affordable funding.

“We create wealth in this country, but we do not retain it,” he stated.

“Much of the wealth created is in the hands of foreign interests. When they make money here, they have every means to take it back to their country, and we make it easy for them to repatriate it,” he added.

According to him, sectors such as mining and oil had operated for years with limited benefits to the wider economy because their gains had not translated into industrial expansion or agricultural modernisation.

“The mining sector and those other sectors have become an enclave with very limited linkages to the rest of the economy,” he said.