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NDC MPs’ demand immediate publication of all expenditure undertaken with the borrowed funds

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Members of the Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC) party in Parliament has asked the government to immediately publish all expenditures undertaken with borrowed funds and resources that came to the government.

At a news conference, the NDC MPs’ maintains that the government has borrowed eighty (80) billion cedis in the last two and half years, bringing Ghana’s total debts to two hundred (200) billion cedis.

This they say was in addition to unprecedented resources including oil revenues available to the current administration.

Addressing the media, a Ranking Member on the fiance committee, Casiel Ato Forson says, in spite of this, the government has little to show in terms of capital investments.

The Minority news conference was in reaction to government’s response to an earlier news conference by the minority.

Mr. Forson called on the President to admit that he has not been candid with the people of Ghana in the management of the economy, stressing the his position that, “he must also admit that his borrowing policy has pushed Ghana into unsustainable debt which future generations will struggle to pay. It is for this and other reasons that we demand an immediate publication of all expenditure undertaken with the borrowed funds and all the resources received by President Akufo-Addo”.

“The foregoing shows that President Akufo-Addo has been unable to keep his word in opposition not to borrow. He has also failed to prudently utilize the heavy borrowing in a manner that is sustainable or in investments that can add value to the economy. Instead, he has pumped these expensively borrowed funds in this unsustainable consumption expenditure with little or no bearing on the rapid development of the country”.

This lack of tangible outcomes has influenced the adoption of a deceptive narrative to explain away the poor performance, he added.

He further said as stated below, “using Government of Ghana and other state data sources, we showed that in addition to increasing the public debt by GHS 80 billion from GHS 122 billion in 2016 to GHS 200 billion in 2019, President Akufo-Addo had received about GHS 120 billion in both tax and non-tax revenue. We also wish to remind Ghanaians that the GHS122 billion includes the deceptive GHS2 billion on account of using End-March 2017 instead of End-December 2016 exchange rate and the administration has been the beneficiary of 2 additional oil and gas fields that have almost tripled output at higher global prices. We gave the following breakdown for these resource inflows;

  • Total tax revenue (2017 to 2019)-GHS 113.5 billion;
  • Total oil revenue (2017 to 2019)- GHS 12.3 billion;
  • Total grants (2017 to 2019)- GHS 3.7 billion;
  • Total addition to public debt (2017 to 2019 first quarter)- GHS 80 billion;
  • Total amount of resources available to President Akufo-Addo since 2017 –GHS 209.5 billion”.

Story by Edzorna Francis Mensah

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