Online Desk: Ghana has secured 600 million U.S. dollars in funding from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of a 3-billion-dollar bailout program, the government announced late Friday.

The IMF’s decision came after Ghana clinched a deal with its official creditors a week earlier to restructure parts of its external debts, a critical requirement to unlock the second tranche of IMF funding.

“Ghana’s performance under the program has been strong. All the quantitative performance criteria for the first review and almost all indicative targets and structural benchmarks are on track,” the IMF said in a statement.

“The 600 million dollars gives us additional fiscal space to support budget implementation in line with the program’s requirements. We will continue to strengthen expenditure controls and improve revenue generation to improve our creditworthiness by 2026,” said Ghanaian Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Attah.

Ghana, once ranked as one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa, has been plagued by severe economic crises in recent years marked by rising inflation, exchange rate fluctuation, and soaring cost of living.

The Ghanaian government obtained approval for the 3-billion-dollar loan from the IMF last May, hoping to roll out a flurry of economic reforms to steer the economy toward recovery.