A former Deputy Minister for Communication, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, has revealed that Ghana’s economy is in shambles.
According to him, the true state of the economy is no secret to the ordinary Ghanaian who has to daily contend with rising cost of living. He indicated that there is a sense of “palpable” hardship being endured by Ghanaians due to government’s poor decisions.
“… It is obvious that our economy is in shamble. For many people, they use micro indicators to assess the health of the economy. In other words, what you find on the market, how your pocket feels like, your ability to afford basic necessities of life… If we were to use that, it is quite obvious that the economy is in complete disarray. Times are simply too hard, we are at unprecedented level with regards to fuel prices, rents, transportation prices, food prices, people can barely afford one meal a day. Life is really hard for many people…”
Felix Kwakye Ofosu
Mr Kwakye Ofosu highlighted that there has never been “a time where there has not been economic difficulty” with successive government in times past. This, he explained, is because by the very nature of the economy since independence, the country has not been able to achieve the level of development economically that it would wish for.
Nonetheless, he stated that in the last forty years at least, persons who have lived in the country and are of age can testify that “we’ve not had this form of hardship” it is currently experiencing under the present government.
“That really is the crux of the issue. So, we are not talking about regular economic problems stemming from our state of development. We are talking about unprecedented levels of hardship stemming from serious economic decay and mismanagement. So, we need to distinguish the two positions…”
Felix Kwakye Ofosu
Government has no plan to address economic challenges
The former deputy communication minister described as “more worrying”, the fact that “this government does not appear to have any plan to address the problem”. He opined that it is one thing to have a problem and then it is another to see concrete efforts aimed at addressing it, “so that all of us can come out of this mess”.
“There does not appear to be any plan, there’s complete nonchalance… We are not very far away from what is happening in Sri Lanka… We are on the verge of collapse, there’s no dispute about it.
Felix Kwakye Ofosu
Mr Kwakye stated that since the beginning of last year and right after the elections, government, due to its election related expenditure, experienced some fiscal slippages. By this, he explained that the country had “simply lived beyond our means” and as such, had incurred a huge deficit and quite some sizable debt.
“Then we have a problem with our public debt which is so big that what it takes to service it is simply strangulating us…”
Felix Kwakye Ofosu
Commenting on former President Mahama’s aversion to non-concessionary loans by government, Mr Kwakye Ofosu revealed that the opposition NDC has “absolutely every intention of coming back” and has no intention of inheriting a bad economy.
“We certainly do not want to inherit a bad economy. In fact, no government deserves that. If we inherit it, all the things we are saying, debt restructuring is something that we will pursue and we’ve made it very clear and we’ve not hidden it.”
Felix Kwakye Ofosu
Mr Kwakye Ofosu indicated that should the NDC inherit a bad economy, it will ensure that its government aligns expenditure with revenue, because they “are not going to engage in reckless expenditure”.
“Certainly, our President will not be flying in a 20, 000 euro an hour jet when we have a presidential jet sitting here… We are not going to waste monies on projects that have been poorly thought through. Every single expenditure we make will be aligned to the interest of the people of this country.”
Felix Kwakye Ofosu
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