Ghana - Covid-19 Response Support Programme

The proposed project is an ADF Grant of Forty-Nine million Five Hundred Thousand Units of Account (UA 49,500,000) to the Republic of Ghana to finance the Ghana-COVID-19 Response Support Program (GCRSP). GCRSP aims to support the implementation of Ghana’s national COVID-19 Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan (EPRP); and the Coronavirus Alleviation Program (CAP). This is a Crisis Response Budget Support (CRBS) operation, disbursable in a single tranche in 2020. The program was prepared in close collaboration with the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Korean EXIMBANK), which is providing a parallel financing of USD 30 million to the Republic of Ghana. It comes in response to the financing requests from the Government of Ghana on 27th March 2020, 14th and 28th April 2020. Indeed, the first two cases of COVID-19 in Ghana were reported on March 12, 2020. The number of cases has progressively increased to 26,125, 139 deaths; 3,717 active cases, and 22,270 recoveries by July 16th, 2020. At the time, 58 % of the infected people are men and 42% women. More than 331,366 screening tests had been performed by this date constituting1% of the total population. The positivity rate is 7.6% and the case fatality rate (CFR) is about 0.6%. To counter potential surge in infections at the end of the partial lockdown, Government intensified contact tracing and testing to quickly detect and isolate new cases. The expected outcomes of the program are to (i) curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and (ii) build resilience to alleviate the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic.