Mills should stop crowing about phantom achievements

The Chronicle does not believe that inflation, for instance, is in single digit, when the cost of goods and services are rising in double and triple figures. Does it make any sense to continue to pontificate that inflation is in single digit when the cedi has lost nearly 50 percent of its value since Prof. Mills took charge of Government House?

When the former law lecturer stumbled to the podium at the Independence Square in Accra and fumbled his lines at the swearing in ceremony, the cedi was exchanging for $1 to GH¢1.10. This morning, most forex bureaux in the national capital are buying and selling the dollar at well over GH¢1.70.

In an economy driven more by foreign imports than the exportation of local produce, there is so much pressure on the cedi that it is unable to stand on its own against the major currencies.  With the cedi falling, the cost of every item imaginable is rising on the market.

Against this reality, the Ghana Statistical Service is screwing up economic indices in the country by serving cooked figures. The last time The Chronicle spoke to Mr. Ebo Duncan, Director at the Ghana Statistical Service in charge of inflation, told this paper that under the system they were employing, on any occasion that the officers of the service visit any shop on the list, and for any reason that shop is closed, it means that all items listed for measure in that particular shop are zero-rated.

What this means is that in the estimation of the Statistical Service, anybody could walk into the market anywhere in that particular area, and collect those items for free. In the estimation of The Chronicle, this method of calculating inflation does not reflect on the reality on the ground. It is indeed criminal.

If the Government of President Mills is not merely interested in playing his kind of divisive politics with the figures, he should commission an independent body to examine how inflation and other economic indices are worked out at the Ghana Statistical Service.

Inflation figures in Ghana do not work. Let the President and his roof-top advertisers of the so-called Ghana Better agenda leave the people alone. In this country, the real economic figures are reflected in the price of cement, transportation, basic food items and rent. The cost of fixing these items is certainly rising well above the so-called single digit inflation.

Under this President, even electricity is served in tots. The ordinary Ghanaian cannot, and is not living on the meagre wages announced with glee, when government appointees and their cronies are looting the state treasury.

When people walk from the classroom into ministerial and party appointments, and build mansions in the first two years of being in government, it is a matter for concern.

Those praising him to the high heavens for allowing them to loot the national coffers would not tell him. But on the streets of cities, towns and villages across the nation, John Evans Atta Mills is not a very popular name.  The best Atta Mills could do to ease the pain of many Ghanaians is to stop crowing about achievements that do not exist. The average Ghanaian is a very angry person!