News:
June 21, 2023
Ranking member on Finance Isaac Adongo has taken a swipe at the President and his vice for signing onto the International Monetary fund (IMF) programme which will result in heap of miseries on the already suffering Ghanaians.
According to him after years of economic mismanagement leading to untold hardship, massive job losses and unemployment, government is not coming clean or apologising to Ghanaians but rather resorting to self-denial and cooking up economic and financial data.
By 2019, Ghana’s debt burden was already hurting the economy so badly. Ghana was reeling under a burden of over 91% of debt service to tax revenue accompanied by high external vulnerability.
At the same time, the government was visibly struggling to generate net international reserves to cover massive offshore debt service obligations that were due.
The true deficit of Ghana’s primary balance, debt position, and net international reserves were being consistently cooked to show unrealistic economic indicators.
While this charade was on government, was in difficulties in raising money domestically or in the Capital market to refinance maturing debts amidst unsustainable gross financing needs in excess of 20% of GDP. This invariably created fear and panic across global capital markets about the eminent insolvency, bankruptcy, and the palpable collapse of the Ghanaian bubble.
This led to the unanimity among rating agencies about Ghana’s grim economic outlook and dire reality.
And signs were very clear on the wall that Ghana’s economy was in trouble from economic mismanagement. At some point, the government was seen picking up excessive printed money from the BoG.
The unfolding scenarios led to non-resident investors aggressively selling off their domestic bonds and repatriating the foreign currency, leading to dwindling foreign reserves.
President Nana Addo had told Ghanaians that he was relying on the intellectual capacity of Dr Bawumia to transform Ghana. Was Dr Bawumia not the head of the Economic Management Team that created this mess? Which vision is left to be talked about?
Check the NPP manifesto for the 2016 elections and compare with Dr Bawumia’s propaganda but naive experimental lecture notes from 2014 to 2015 and you will see that was his vision that metamorphosed into Ghana’s Vision and Economic Policies since 2017 to date:
• Moving the economy from taxation to production. This is one of the fanciful visions of Dr. Bawumia that led to the collapse of production after they somersaulted and introduced over 24 taxes.
• I village 1 dam is yet another vision Dr Bawumia espoused while in opposition. It was subsequently implemented in government. Dr. Bawumia should speak to this and tell us what this vision has brought to the economy of Ghana. We can only remember these dugouts as one of wasteful ventures that had become death-traps, killing people in rural areas.
• Dr. Bawumia’s naive 1$million per constituency a year has rather led to massive arrears and commitments.
• Has Dr. Bawumia ‘s Establishment of development authorities not become a conduit for siphoning and the looting of public funds? He should speak to it and tell us what the achievements are.
• 1 district 1 factory became a source of fleecing the public purse through the granting of ridiculous tax waivers and painting and co-opting of factories that could be “colonial era” factories as 1D1F factories.
• tolling the toads without borrowing led to bankrupt and insolvent Ghana.
• Naive benchmark regimes and frivolous discounts to ignorantly drive container volumes at the port from Togo has led to a collapse of imports with empty terminals in Tema and Takoradi.
• A policy to clean up and strengthen the financial sector rather led to the collapse of about 422 financial institutions with the remaining ones extremely malnourished waiting to be crashed under the IMF program with a planned Ghc30 billion.
• IPEP. What has this policy espoused by Dr. Mahmoud Bawumia brought?
• By the end of Nana Addo’s first four years, there shall be no community with toilet problems? When all the man can think of, is toilets, which he couldn’t even execute, who takes such a person seriously.
Dr Bawumia is the first economist in Ghana with the most venomous vision that has landed all of us on life support. He now wants to be president with a vision to discount us from the last support to kill us completely.
If Dr. Bawumia had any iota of credibility, a modicum of shame in the eye, and respect for Ghanaians, he would have stayed away from contemplating to be president.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com