The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has responded to the misplaced commentary by former President John Mahama on the national debt stock under the Akufo-Addo presidency.
Describing it as erroneous and a stack misrepresentation carved by the former president to sway Ghanaians away from the failed administration he partly supervised from 2009 to 2017.
Speaking to a gathering of stakeholders drawn from across the Kwahu Traditional and Municipal Area on Wednesday, 16th November, 2024, as part of his tour of the area, President Akufo-Addo said, he will not hesitate on any day or occasion to remind the one-term former President that Ghanaians do not have the lose retentive memories that he so thinks and speaks of always.
Recalling the sordid dark days on erratic power supply under John Mahama where Ghanaians suffered the lowest period of growth, 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.
Speaking to the gathering made up of men and women of the clergy and muslim clerics, as well as Chiefs and key stakeholders of the area, the President said, “I’ve heard John Mahama speak three days ago that the national debt has grown to unsustainable proportions.
“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.”
Relating it to the exchange rate, President Akufo-Addo pointed out that, “to complete the calculation, in 2016 when he was exiting, 4 cedis to a dollar meant that 120 billion debt, was $30 billion. Today, at 767 billion cedis with the cedi being pegged at 17 cedis to the dollar, in dollar terms, is 45 bn usd.
“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.
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