Peter Akwasi Mensah, a member of the NDC’s communications team has ridiculed President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Dr. Bawumia and Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, for making life difficult for the average Ghanaian.
According to him, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government is reckless in their administration and has caused pain to the Ghanaian citizenry. He argued that in the history of Ghana, this is the first time the country has experienced such economic struggles to an extent where individual bond holders have been featured in Government’s Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDE).
Mr. Mensah commented that Ghana has become the first country in Africa’s history to involve individual bond holders in a Domestic Debt Exchange Programme.
“It is a shame on the party. They have demonstrated that the Fiscal Responsibility Act, is not actually a Fiscal Responsibility Act but rather it is a recklessness responsibility act. I am telling you. They have demonstrated a high level of recklessness and that’s Akufo-Addo.”
Peter Akwasi Mensah
He pointed out the fact that Ghana is the first African country to to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and still include individual bondholders in a DDE.
“This is the first time in the history of African politics. So I’m saying that Akufo-Addo, Bawumia and Ken Ofori-Atta need to be named in the Guinness Book of Records. They’ve set an unbreakable economic record in Africa’s history.”
Peter Akwasi Mensah
Meanwhile, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is optimistic that Ghana will conclude talks with the IMF on a possible financial bailout Programme. He claimed that DDE came along with several challenges after its announcement but it has now been accepted by the people of Ghana.
Akufo-Addo Criticized
Dr. Amoako Baah, a political science lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), however, has sent a strong message to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for reshuffling his appointees.
Dr. Amoako Baah said that a change in ministerial appointment is not what is needed at this juncture of economic crisis and that the best way to move forward would be to reduce the size of government, to enable the economy to thrive a little bit.
“What he(Akufo-Addo) did is not what is critical, that is not what is needed. We need reduction in numbers of appointees so that government expenditure goes down. Every action the President takes now must be in this line – reduction of expenditure.”
Dr. Amoako Baah
He further explained that the reason why the inflation is so high and the country is unable to do anything against it is because of the fiscal policy of government. He said that many people talk about the monetary policy from the Bank of Ghana but that is not where the problem emanates from. He claimed it is the fiscal policy because the government is spending more money, than it is taking in.
According to Dr. Baah, the only way to produce good results is to cut down on government’s spending, adding that when that is done, it will go a long way to help in the Debt Restructuring Programme.
He then called for the suspension of government’s infrastructure development for a while and that such development projects should first be grouped according to the order of merit.
“We should group them from critical to normal and so forth, so we know which one to tackle first. Some projects we just started, suspend all of them.”
Dr. Amoako Baah
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