News:
September 23, 2016
The Minority spokesperson on Finance, Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei has described as unfounded claims by the NDC’s Forum for setting the record straight that the NPP handled the economy incompetently when they were in office.
Transport Minister, Fiifi told journalists Thursday that Ghanaians got a rude awakening to the NPP’s incompetence after the HIPC program was completed by the end of President Kufuor’s first term in office in 2004.
According to him, the NPP cannot be credited with a sterling record in the economy under the Kufuor regime because it was shielded from economic difficulties through its decision to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
But speaking on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana yesterday, Dr, Akoto Osei rather accused the NDC of having nothing positive to show for the management of the country’s economy under both Mills and Mahama administrations.
“When you don’t pay contractors there is arrears. These contractors have gone to borrow from the banking system. They are collapsing the banking system, and so it is showing up as debt in the banking system. We have eight banks and Bawumia told them so. That is a serious problem and that is incompetence right now.
This comes on the heels of arguments put forward by a former deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana and the running mate of the NPP Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia that some banks in Ghana risks collapse due to the continuous hikes of bad loans on their books.
“The asset quality review of banks, conducted in 2015, shows significant vulnerability of banks to current economic conditions and that if the affected banks were to fully provision for all the bad loans, a significant number of them will collapse.
“In fact eight banks were identified to exhibit significant weaknesses with capital adequacy ratios of below 10 percent and some below 5 percent and nearing collapse so it is a real problem.”
Dr Bawumia stated at his recent lecture on the topic, ‘The State of the Ghanaian Economy – A Foundation of Concrete or Straw’.