President of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Angel Carbonu, has urged government to rescind its decision on the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP).
According to him, government must halt the domestic debt exchange programme and explore alternative means of solving the country’s economic challenges.
“The DDEP shouldn’t have started at all, it’s a non-starter programme, the government should have looked for other innovative means to make up for its own balances.”
Angel Carbonu
Mr Carbonu indicated that the DDEP is “strange to our economic lexicon”, considering what is happening in the country currently. He noted that elderly citizens of this country who have sacrificed their lives are today the ones picketing at the Ministry of Finance.
“We will call on the government to abort the DDEP all together.”
Angel Carbonu
Since securing a staff-level agreement with the IMF, the government has been working with stakeholders to get them to subscribe to the debt exchange programme. Some groups such as the Pensioners Bondholders Forum has fiercely kicked against the DDEP, arguing that it will affect their livelihoods.
Meanwhile, former presidential hopeful and National Democratic Congress (NDC) stalwart, Sylvester Mensah, has commended the former Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo’s picketing at the Finance Ministry in solidarity with pensioners and other individual bondholders.
He stated that the former Chief Justice articulated the government’s “arrogant posture and the vain threat of sinking together if bondholders refuse to participate”. He, however, reckoned that the former Chief Justice only sought to articulate some of the issues “in an effort to bring clarity to how we got here, and government’s inadequate share of the burden of domestic debt restructuring”.
The former NHIA Boss explained that he expected the former Chief Justice to have gone further to say there is a lack of confidence in the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, “whose poor management and self-interest in the reckless borrowing over the past 6 years have brought Ghana to the edge of a cliff”.
“We applaud former Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo for her discerning and distinguished voice in these deeply troubling times in Ghana. It is entirely predictable that NPP apologists and grassroots attack dogs would be unleashed to devour her, but to no effect. Ghanaians have been awoken from their slumber by the super incompetence of the worst government in Ghana’s post-independence history.”
Sylvester Mensah
Former Chief Justice criticized for participating in picketing
Prior to this, a leading member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Gabby Otchere-Darko, indicated that he does not get the “fuss” former Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo, made over the inclusion of pensioners in the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme.
In a tweet, Mr. Otchere-Darko highlighted that while he sympathizes with those picketing, he finds it difficult to understand why they are asking “to be exempted from an improved offer programme which is voluntary”.
“I was among those who pleaded for the exemption of pensioners. But, the Govt had to balance all that with the need to protect the economy for the 33m population and settled on the 15% yield maturing in 5yrs instead of 15, and that the individual was free not to participate.”
Gabby Otchere-Darko
Mr Otchere-Darko emphasized that for a “former CJ to take up a noble cause such as she did but at such late hour when all was done and for all that publicity, she owed it to herself and her social standing” to have understood the issues far better than what she exhibited last Friday. He noted that Madam Akuffo is “bigger” than that.
Currently, members of the Pensioner Bondholders Forum on Monday, February 13, 2023, have returned to the Finance Ministry to picket for the 6th day to demand a total exemption of their investments from the Domestic Debt Exchange programme.
