The Ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has urged Ghanaians not to vote former President John Mahama back to power in 2020.
According to the party, Ghanaians would be making their biggest mistake ever if they are to re-elect Mr. Mahama.
General Secretary of the NPP, John Boadu, made this known at a press conference on Sunday, April 7, 2019, to respond to the NDC’s counter-economic lecture held on Thursday, April 4, at the Mensvic Hotel in Accra.
He branded the NDC as a destroyer of Ghana’s socio-economic initiatives, saying Mr. Mahama has nothing good to offer Ghana when brought back.
According to the NPP, since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, it has been the builder of Ghana while the NDC had mastered the act of destroying every national economic and social projects that are supposed to better the lives of the ordinary Ghanaians.
Touching on how the NDC has mismanaged the Ghanaian economy over the years, Mr. Boadu observed that “NDC took us to HIPC but did not have the courage to admit it even though it was under an IMF programme in 2000. It took President Kufuor to have the bulk of Ghana’s debt written off and get Ghana out of the IMF programme. Not only that, NPP, through the focused operations of GNPC, made Ghana an oil rich nation but left office before a single barrel of Jubilee oil could be produced.”
NDC’s lecture delivered by its Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo, was in sharp response to Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s presentation on the economy a day earlier during the Ministry of Information’s Town Hall Meeting with the Economic Management Team (EMT) of the Akufo-Addo’s administration.
At the Thursday’s lecture, the NDC released economic figures to ‘expose’ what they described as “cooked figures” on Ghana’s debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which vice president Dr Mahamudu Bawumia pegged at 48 per cent.
Dr Bawumia at a town hall meeting on Ghana’s economy Wednesday pointed out among other things that, Ghana’s debt to GDP stands at 48 per cent, and indicated the economy has been performing better in the last two years than it was under the erstwhile John Mahama’s administration.
But Mr. Adongo, argued that the figure given by the vice president was inaccurate because it was outdated.
The MP whose lecture has since been described as a ‘concert party’ for lacking ‘credible’ and convincing statistics on the economy as well as for continuously singing praises of ex-President Mahama, disclosed that Dr Bawumia used December 2018 figures of the country’s foreign debt and added same to March 2019 domestic debt.
He had contended that if the old series had been used, Ghana’s debt to GDP would have been 72 per cent, noting that it was outrageous considering the fact that the government was yet to experience its first election.
Response
But the NPP says the previous Mahama administration virtually grounded the economy by taking oil-rich Ghana from a growth path of 14 percent to 3.4 percent.
Mr. Boadu stated that “also, the NPP under President Kufuor left office with Ghana’s first credit rating taking us to B+. Before that we were not even rated. Credit rating is necessary for both government and business to transact business and borrow internationally.
He observed “say No to a redenominated candidate (Mahama) for he never changes. Mahama – the Value is the Same. More importantly, the NDC alternative under Mahama is still scary”.
He indicated that “after eight years of NDC economic management our rating went down from B+ to B-. Yes, B minus under John Mahama! After only 20 months of NPP under Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, we have already been upgraded from B- to B. Our upgraded credit ratings earned us an oversubscribed Eurobond issue in multiples of seven at the lowest coupon rate and longer maturity Ghana has ever had.”
BY Melvin Tarlue
