More than 500 stakeholders and identifiable groups participated in the historic meeting with the Government’s Economic Management Team (EMT) in Accra yesterday.
The meeting, which is the first of its kind by any EMT under the Fourth Republic did not only let citizens in on the workings of the EMT but also updated the citizenry on what it has been doing over the last two years.
Dubbed: “The Economic Management Team Town Hall Meeting” the event marked the beginning of series of town hall meetings to be organized by the Ministry of Information for the year.
It was on the theme: “Our Purpose, Our Status, Our Future” and would be held at 24 different locations including, one at the Dominion Centre in North London.
The EMT is a nine member team chaired by the Vice President Alhaji Dr Mahammudu Bawumia. The other members are Mr. Ken Ofori Atta, Minister of Finance, Anthony Akoto Osei, Minister for Monitoring and Evaluation, Dr. Afriyie Akoto, Minister for Agriculture, Mr. Peter John Amewu, Minister of Energy and Mr. John Alan Kyerematen, Minister of Trade and Industry.
The rest are, Professor Gyan Baffour, Minister of Planning, Mr. Yaw Osarfo Maafo, Senior Minister and Professor Joe Amoako Tuffuor Secretary to the EMT.
Addressing participants, the Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia said it was an opportunity to share some of the progress made so far and the way forward for the country’s economy.
He said the state of the economy the New Patriotic Party (NPP) inherited was a challenging economy and at the heart of the country’s recurring economic difficulty was poor economic management.
Dr Bawumia who is also the head of the EMT said in 2012 the economy ended with a fiscal deficit of 12.2 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while 2011 was 11.7 per cent of same and ended at 9.6 per cent in 2016.
“We recall that in this period, for the first time in Ghana’s history, there was double digit fiscal deficit in three consecutive years and plunged into a deep fiscal hole. The debt pileup begun, debt servicing became burdensome, inflation soared and external trade balance worsened,” he emphasized.
He said in spite of these challenging conditions, the competent economic management team has managed to turn things around within the last two years and the country had successfully exited the International Monetary Fund (IMF) extended facility programme.
Touching on the depreciation of the currency, Dr Bawumia blamed it on the conditionalities imposed on the country by the IMF stressing that “The most important and the proximate cause of the recent depreciation is the time inconsistency of an IMF prior action on the reserves target.”
He said at the end of January 2019 as part of the seven prior actions to get to the IMF board and the completion of the IMF programme, Ghana was given seven conditions as part of requirement for the completion.
“One of the conditions that the Bank of Ghana had to meet was to increase its net international reserves to the level of December 2018. To increase the net international reserves, however, meant that the Bank of Ghana could not sell any foreign exchange in the market. They had to essentially hold their hands to the back and could not intervene on the market during this particular period,” he added.
This according to him led to demands for foreign currency outstripping supply since the central bank was not in the position to intervene by pumping in more dollars.
The Vice President concluded by indicating that even though the country was yet to get out of the woods, its handling of the economy had been far better than that of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and called on Ghanaians to support the government in that direction.
“We are changing the country and we have a clear plan that we are following. One can say that Ghana’s future under Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is bright. When it comes to GDP growth, we have performed better than we inherited. In agricultural and industrial growth, inflation and depreciation, we have performed better,” he said.
By Cliff Ekuful
