Minority Rejects Bawumia’s Claim The NDC Is To Blame For Ghana’s Return To The IMF

The Minority in Parliament has rejected assertions by Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia that the former President John Mahama’s administration is partly to blame for the country’s return to the IMF.

 

Dr. Bawumia speaking at the launch of the two new high-level Information Technology programmes at the Accra Business School at Baatson in Accra on Thursday said the prevailing difficulties can be attributed to the “quadruple whammy” the government faces – excess capacity payments, banking sector crisis, Covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war.

 

He said two of the four factors, the excess capacity payments and the banking sector crisis, were inherited from the previous administration.

“If you take out the fiscal impact of this quadruple whammy, Ghana will not be going to the IMF for support because our fiscal, debt and balance of payments outlook would be sustainable. Of the four factors, two (COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war) were external and the other two (the banking sector clean-up and the excess capacity payments) were the result of policies of the previous government.

 

But addressing the media in parliament, Minority Spokesperson on Finance, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson argued the terrible economic realities of today are solely the doing of the Nana Addo administration.

The former deputy finance minister asked the vice president who heads the economic management team to humbly accept his failures.

“…Ghana’s debt situation is precarious, in fact, Ghana will have to do something about our debt situation even before the IMF looks at our face because our debt situation isn’t good at all. Our debt is in excess of 85% of GDP. If you are to add all general government obligations including cocoa bills, Ghana’s debt is in excess of 90% of our GDP, that is where we are. I thought the Vice President who is the Chairman of the Economic Management Team when he had that wonderful opportunity to address the nation through a lecture would have been candid at the minimum, accept that he has failed, apologize to the people of Ghana, and asked us to move. We will not accept this recklessness from him. Ladies and gentlemen any time you meet the Vice President tell him in the face that he’s a failure.”

 

Ranking member for the Mines and Energy Committee and former Power Minister John Jinapor further accused the Nana Addo administration of diverting over 24 billion cedis accrued to the ESLA instead of using it to pay the 9 billion cedis debt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Source: MyGhanaMedia.com