Economist, Professor Eric Osei Assibey, has revealed that information plays a vital role when it comes to the economic management of a country.
Prof Assibey indicated that Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia’s presentation on the state of the economy, was factual, credible and “verifiable”. He noted that the Vice President “spoke to facts” on the economy in a bid to boost investor confidence.
“In economic management information plays a critical role, in the sense that people want credible information to plan, to actually forecast, to internalize it in their costing, in their pricing and I mean in so many ways in their speculative activities. So, at any given time they want credible information and so when you don’t put out information, and it’s not just about information, the information has to be credible, it has to be factual, it has to be empirically verifiable or you should be able to find out whether this information is true or not”.
Professor Eric Osei Assibey
Prof Assibey explained that once the market finds out that the information that is being churned out is “false” and not credible, it actually causes “reputational damage” to the government of the day. He expressed that government eventually falls into a“trap” that will be difficult to get out of.
“I mean, next time when you speak, no one takes you serious”.
Professor Eric Osei Assibey
Dr Bawumia’s facts can be verified
Dr Bawumia’s facts and data, Prof Assibey emphasized, can easily be verified and as such is not up for debate. Citing an instance, he opined that concerning the Bank of Ghana recent NPC announcement, the data that was produced and “if you take the Fitch and Moody’s reports data [which] has been produced”, these are all “verifiable facts that we can all go” and check.
“And I’ve just been doing my crosschecking and I’ve realised that most of the things that were put out were credible, they were factual, you can actually go and check it to see that indeed whether inflation has not been rising. Indeed, if you’ll not find before 2019 inflation got into single digits, and that is around 7.5; the average about 7.6% over the three previous years. And you could clearly see that interest rates was trending downwards. So, it is difficult to debate, to say anything other than what has been presented”.
Professor Eric Osei Assibey
Prof Assibey, however, conceded to the fact that the reason behind the numbers can be “debatable”. He noted that it’s “economics” and everyone will obviously have a different opinion just as “we often say that economic opinions are like noses”, everyone has his or hers.
“But then facts are facts , there’s no way you can deny facts, so long as it is written in black and white”.
Professor Eric Osei Assibey
On his part, Economic Advisor and Spokesperson for the Office of the Vice President, Dr Gideon Boako, justified the silence of the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, on the state of the economy. He revealed that this was done to avert making noise at a time when the government was expected to be finding a solution to the economic crisis that was threatening the Ghanaian economy.
“The thing is the exchange rate market doesn’t want noise. So, if you are an economist and you’re managing an economy and there seems to be some level of turbulence in the exchange rate market, you don’t hurry to create noise in the system”.
Dr Gideon Boako
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