The Republic’s president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has addressed former President John Mahama’s inappropriate remarks regarding the amount of national debt during the Akufo-Addo administration.
calling it false and a series of lies crafted by the former president to influence Ghanaians to reject the failed government he oversaw in part from 2009 to 2017.
Speaking to a group of stakeholders from all over the Kwahu Traditional and Municipal Area as part of his tour of the region, President Akufo-Addo declared that he would not be afraid to remind the one-term former president that Ghanaians do not have the forgetful memories he constantly thinks about and talks about.
President Akufo-Addo said, “This is the man whose rate of growth of the economy was the lowest the country has ever seen in 20 years, pegging at a paltry and abysmal 2.4 percent.” He was recalling the sombre, dark days of John Mahama’s unstable power supply, when Ghanaians suffered the lowest period of growth.
“I heard John Mahama speak three days ago that the national debt has grown to unsustainable proportions,” the president added, addressing the group of Muslim clerics, clergymen, chiefs, and other important local stakeholders.
“He must know that it’s not everyone who forgets easily. In 2008, when President Mills took over the from President Kufuor, the national debt was 9 billion cedis, by the time they were leaving government, it was 120 billion. It was an increase of 1,233 percent.
Explaining further, he said, in 2016, when I came, it’s gone from 120 billion cedis to 767 billion cedis, that’s an increase of 539 percent. This is less than half of the rate of accumulation of the debt in his time.”
President Akufo-Addo linked it to the currency rate, stating that “to complete the calculation, in 2016 when he was exiting, 4 cedis to a dollar meant that 120 billion debt, was $30 billion.
At 767 billion cedis today, with the cedi set at 17 cedis to the dollar, that amounts to 45 billion US dollars.
“So we have one which went from 9bn to 120 bn usd. Because when he came it was 1 cedis to 1 dollar. 9bn dollars to 30 bn dollars, an increase of 21 bn dollars. You put that against a figure that has gone from 30 bn dollars to 45 billion dollars is an increase of 15 bn dollars,” he indicated.
Based on this simple and obvious exposition, President Akufo-Addo asked, who has had the worst impact in the accumulation of our national debt stock?
“It certainly not me. His performance is much worse than mine. Sometimes when they speak, we don’t investigate it to see where the truth is. Truth, which cannot certainly come from a man under whose regime we had the Graduate Unemployment Association.”
Source: newsthemegh.com