News:
Hon Frank Annoh-Dompreh
March 19, 2022
Majority Chief Whip Frank Annoh-Dompreh has said with the global challenges around the world in the wake of Russia invading Ukraine pushing petroleum prices up and Ghanaians feeling the effect, government is putting in some measures to deal with the challenges the country is confronted with.
According to him if there is anything like worse performance the current President Nana Akufo-Addo’s administration’s performance is better than the best performance of the Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC) statistics and data available are not far fetch.
He was responding to former Deputy Energy Minister in the John Mahama administration, John Jinapor who has called on the president to dissolve the current economic management team led by the Vice President Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia for its abysmal performance.
“You recall that growth was around five (5) percept one of their growth performance was around three (3) percept, among the difficulties we have at the ex-pump price of fuel exchange rate between the cedi and the dollar and its effect on the economy and the people this facts cannot be contested our five percept is far better than their three percept”.
Mr. Dompreh again pointed out that their always difficulties which must be confronted. He said President Mahama went through difficulties and “we criticized him, and we came to power on the hills of those criticisms. “The fact be told, those difficulties were self-imposed. The difficulties that President Mahama went through and the evidence were not far-fetched. Currently we have Russia evasion of Ukraine which is affecting the entire glob; we have COVID-19 which no country can absolve itself; we know the support and intervention that government gave”.
Scanning through West African sub-region, he further pointed out that no government was feeding its citizens as the Ghanaian government did; utilities were almost free for a period of time.
“So our challenge is not self-imposed, the difficulties we are going through are real global challenges which is having its effect on the country and the people. Again, I remember when they were having those difficulties which were self-imposed they run with their tail in between their legs to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) without COVID-19 and Russia invasion of Ukraine they run for policy credibility they were proud of their economic management team nobody called for its dissolution; why would you want to call for the current economic management team that has been honest and confronted with this global problems?”.
“I think its cheap political point they want to achieve” and they cannot pretend that all is well, government has been frank and honest with the challenges as the President has said on many occasions that “times are hard”.
And the policies that government introduced are all tailed through reducing the hardship that Ghanaians are going through so there is a clear distinction a government that you can trust and that has come over serious global difficulties and compare to someone who imposed difficulties on themselves, he said.
“We are confident that we would find home grown solutions to the difficulties that we are having, we do not want a situation where we would be told by the IMF they would look into our face and say public sector recruitment has to be halted for you to instil discipline into the economic management”.
In addition, he noted that they are confident they would be able to raise the needed revenue within, and for a long time a third world country has not been able to do that. Ghana is setting a very good example as a country like Greece when they were facing harsh economic difficulties they run to the IMF.
”Rwanda and few African countries have said they want to bit the bullet, and face the reality and deal with it. I am proud the president has not pretended about it and have said they would do all they can to get over the fleeting challenges that we are facing as a country. We want to appeal to Ghanaians that this is a government we trust we are not pretending about the challenges that we are having; Europe and industrialized countries are facing same ex-pump price challenges”.
Again, in the UK people are queening to get fuel. He acknowledged and accepted that Ghana is in difficult times and the NDC Minority should not take advantage of this because of politics, and throw dust into the eyes of the people “our worse is their best”.
“To the extent that we should run to the IMF, we have not done that even after a global pandemic the serious difficulties being imposed on us they should not come and lectures us on our economy”.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com