Leslie Louis Gardner-Boadi, a member of the communications team of the New Patriotic Party
Leslie Louis Gardner-Boadi, a member of the communications team of the New Patriotic Party has diffused claims by the Minority caucus in Parliament that the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government is steering Ghana’s economy into a ditch.
According to him, available data indicates that contrary to the submission by NDC MPs, the government has since 2017 recorded positive strides in the handling of the economy.
Speaking on TV Africa’s Morning Show, Gardner-Boadi described analysis presented by former deputy Finance Minister, Cassiel Ato Forson at an economy dialogue last Monday as a presentation of ‘voodoo figures’ which should not be given any attention.
He contested the figures churned out Ato Forson and stated that the Akufo-Addo government amid the scourge of the Coronavirus pandemic had managed the economy well and deserves plaudits.
“Ato Forson engaged in voodoo economics and people should treat their claims with the contempt. The figures he released can be described as voodoo. When we took office in 2017, the debt to GDP was 72.5%. What we are faced with is a party in opposition that is just complaining and bundling figures around. Our debt to GDP right now is 76.6%. When it comes to inflation, at the time the NDC left office, it was 17.7%. As we speak today inflation rate is 9.8% and expected to reach 7.8%. Look at our monitoring policy, NDC bequeathed to us an interest rate of 26% and today as we speak it is 13.5%.
“On the face of all that I’m saying, you can clearly see that we are on track. When we came into power, there were debts so we had to pay contractors over 6 billion. We have paid contractors. Look at the debt they left us in NHIS, 1.2 billion cedis and we have paid over 1 billon. Even in the face of COVID-19 we still managed to grow the economy by 1.1% in 2020,” he said.
The issue of which party handles the economy better has regained the top spot in media discourse following an economic dialogue held by NDC MPs on Monday, July 26, 2021.
Cassiel Ato Forson warned that Ghana could return to HIPC if urgent measures are not instituted to wheel the economy from its current course.
“The Akufo-Addo-Bawumia government must seek urgent debt relief from the International Monetary Fund through the newly proposed Debt Relief Initiative, known as the Common Framework for Debt Treatments Beyond the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), which can be likened to the HIPC Initiative,” the Member of Parliament for Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam Constituency suggested.
He added that “failure by the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia government to do as recommended, within the next 18 months, would expose Ghana to a high risk of default on its debt service obligations which will plunge the country into much deeper economic crisis.”