A Communicator with the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Sawla-Tuna-Kalba constituency Hon. Alhaji Abdulai Mohammed has lashed out at the Akufo- Addo led administration over what he describes as the “gross mismanagement of the national economy”.
According to him, the NPP has gone back on its 2016 manifesto promise to reduce government borrowing and improve the national debt sustainability position.
He said Ghana’s public debt which stood at GHS120 billion as at December 2016 when the NPP won the elections, Ghana’s debt has since ballooned to GHS575.7 billion in six and a half years under their mismanagement.
“You may recall, that in the run-up to the 2016 general elections, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), led by its over-hyped economic messiah, Dr Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia and then Candidate Akufo Addo, berated the NDC for what they described as excessive borrowing by the Mahama government,” Alhaji Abdulai Mohammed stated this during the Thursday edition of Yagbon radio morning show.
“The NPP led by Dr Bawumia, described Ghana’s debt position at the time, as unsustainable and went on to describe the country as a “Highly Indebted Lower Middle Income Country (HIMIC)”.
Note that, the promise was not to reduce the rate of borrowing as the NPP is deceitfully claiming today, but rather, to reduce government borrowing. And it was on the basis of this and many other lofty promises, that Ghanaians voted Akufo Addo and the NPP into office,he told host Diwura Abdul Fataw.
But speaking on the same platform, Andrews Choribee, a communicator with the NPP in the Bole-Bamboi constituency refuted claims that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has borrowed more than any government in the history of Ghana.
He said current statistics and global events do not add up to make the government the worse when it comes to borrowing and that the Akufo-Addo government was borrowed at acceptable levels until Covid-19 struck and erased the successes and returns of those borrowing, which now makes it difficult to see the benefits.
He added that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) cannot be exonerated in this whole debt situation of the country because “their borrowing is also part of our current debt because it is a continuous debt profile and secondly, they never got hit by any global pandemic like Covid-19 or the Russia-Ukraine war that we find ourselves in.
The two communicators who appeared on the show were speaking on President Akufo- Addo statement that Ghana will return to the international capital market to borrow in order to fund infrastructural projects.
According to him, recent approval of the $3 billion loan facility from the International Monetary Fund and the successful implementation of programme initiatives will set the path for the country to re-enter the international capital markets after it earlier shut out.
Speaking during a panel discussion at the 2023 Qatar-Africa Economic Forum in Doha, President Akufo-Addo, however, admitted that government was in no rush to return to international capital market but it will be prudent for the country to take advantage of the market in order to make global savings.
“We have positioned ourselves to be able to go back into the international market which had been a source of funding for us during the first three or four years of our government.
Source: yagbonradioonline
