Member of Parliament for Nhyieaso and member of the Finance Committee in Parliament, , Dr Stephen Amoah has told Former President John Dramani Mahama that no one is disputing the fact that Ghana, just as any other country around the globe, is going through some economic challenges at the moment.
Dr Amoah said countries including the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK) are all having their share of the economic challenges therefore, Ghana’s situation is not different.
Even in the midst of the economic challenges, he said, there are still some of Ghana’s economic indicators such as the lending rate, still better than what was bequeathed to the Akufo-Addo-led government by Mr Mahama.
“Nobody disputes the fact that Ghana, just like any other country around the globe is going through some sort of hardships and economic crisis. I think we should look at other places if this is not true. For about forty years now, US is experiencing the highest inflationary rate, UK moved from 1 to 4, which is about 200 per cent. So we need to analyze all these things in the context that we are talking about then we can do proper trend or comparative analyses. We even have some of the economic parameters still doing far better than what we took over.
“So, I think the former President, as much as he is actually saying what is prevailing in terms of hardships in the system, which that one I agree, he is rather doing politics more than trying to analyze issues in the right context and offer better alternative. If you go this way then we will all move beyond probably our professional ethics and performance. Even today that policy rate has been increased by about 250 basis points, it is still far lower than what we took over, lending rate is still far lower than what we took over. The economy has met uncontrollable global factors, this is a fact.
“If you have an economy that went through over 22 months of impaired productivity which is not your fault, is it government’s fault that restaurants and shops had to close down? I don’t think it was our fault that private sector had to sack about over forty thousand workers, I don’t think it is the fault of this government that fuel prices moved all-time high, these are major issues around the globe. Under Mahama we didn’t have these problems with these same causative factors, no but what happened? We had lending rate moving to about forty percent” he told Accra based Joy FM on Monday March 21.
The former Chief Executive Officer of the Micro Finance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC) was reacting to a comment made by Mr Mahama to the effect that the Akufo-Addo administration has badly managed the economyand the dollar has arrested Bawumia.
This is the audio
