The government’s attempt to blame its rather shocking u-turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the effects of the global pandemic; COVID-19 and the ongoing war in Russia and Ukraine has been described as ungodly and deceitful.
This is because the government has consistently steered the economy to one inevitable conclusion; a return to the IMF.
This is according to the Executive Director for the Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA), Bismark Adongo Ayorogo. He said this when he spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show.
He said the government should not pin the current state of the country’s economy, in its entirety, on the aforementioned.
“Nobody should be deceived that the Ukraine war and the COVID-19 had a significant impact on the Ghanaian economy. No, that is not it. This government already demonstrated incompetence at the beginning. The majority of us saw that they were not on top of the job.”
“The growth rate of the economy started declining even when we did not have COVID-19,” he said.
Mr. Adongo Ayorogo continued to say that “this government prioritized wrongly. Those things have brought us here.”
He said the Akufo Addo-led government, despite its relentless assault on the abilities of the erstwhile John Mahama administration, came into office and squandered monies that had been put in the stabilisation fund and many other such funds.
Even worse, was the elephant-sized government that was contracted by the President. Mr. Adongo Ayorogo goes on to talk about corruption.
“Is it COVID-19 and Ukraine that is making lose, every year, Ghc3 billion to corruption? We know what we have done to ourselves and to the economy. Why are we going to the IMF? So that they will tell us to stop corruption? Why do we want to be reminded of what we already know?”
Amid protests over spiralling prices and the rising cost of living, the government of Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo has reneged on its pledge not to borrow from the IMF after hitting the wall with its domestic economic recovery plan.
On 1 July President Akufo-Addo announced that he has instructed Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to open negotiations for a programme.
“The engagements with the IMF will seek to provide a balance of payment as part of a broader effort to quicken Ghana’s build back in the face of challenges induced by the Covid-19 pandemic and, recently, the Russia-Ukraine crises,” a government statement said.
Until now, the government had ruled out the option of an IMF programme, settling for a homegrown economic recovery plan that included the introduction of a 1.5% tax on electronic financial transactions (E-levy) which sparked widespread protests.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
