GH1.8 Can’t Save Economy -Minority

By Maxwell Ofori, Parliament House
The New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) representatives in Parliament, the minority, has stated that the current state of the country’s economy could not be saved by a mere supplementary budget, as the finance minister wants Ghanaians to believe.

The minority noted that the John Mahama-led National Democratic Congress has failed totally and would only be deceiving themselves, should they assume the GHC 1.8bn supplementary budget could save the economy from sinking further.

Addressing the media in Parliament House yesterday, the NPP minority said “we can say without any fear of contradiction that the John Mahama led NDC government has failed and this supplementary budget cannot save it.”

The Member of Parliament for Old Tafo, Dr Anthony Akoto Osei, who addressed the media said the statement of the Minister of Finance, Seth Terkpe, only confirmed that ‘this’ John Mahama led NDC government does not have an appreciation of the reality of the economic challenges faced by most Ghanaians.

“Ghanaians were promised a Better Ghana in 2008, but going in the 8th year of government in 2016, this government has delivered one of the worst economic performances of any government in Ghana’s history.

The record, after eight budgets of the NDC, is definitely not one of a better Ghana than the one this government inherited in 2009.

“Rather, it is a record of monumental waste of a historic opportunity to transform the economy of Ghana and improve the lives of Ghanaians.

“The supplementary budget, just like all other NDC budgets since 2009, will end up being big on promises and short on delivery,” the statement added.

According to the statement, the GDP growth rate which was inherited by the NPP under the leadership of President Kufuor in 2000 was 3.7%.

In 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, the GDP grew 4.2%, 4.5%, 5.2% and 5.6% respectively, the statement indicated.

“It rose to 5.9% in 2005, 6.4% in 2006, 6.3% in 2007 ant to 8.4% in 2008. This indeed is steady growth and it occurred without revenues from crude oil exports and in periods where the world was seeing the worst economic crisis in decades,” it added.

Dr Akoto also added that the size of Ghana’s economy increased from some $5.1 billion to $28.5 billion, representing a 500% increase, “even in the face of global economic and financial crisis in 2007/8 (with oil prices reaching a record high of $147/barrel) economic growth in 2008 rose to 9.1%.

Ghana was transformed during the period of the NPP’s tenure (2001 – 2008) from a low income HIPC economy to a lower middle income economy on the frontiers of emerging market status.

On agriculture, the statement described as ‘stagnant’, the growth of agricultural sector and said it had seen a decline and had underperformed since 2008.

“Real growth in agriculture tumbled from 7.4% in 2008 to 7.2 in 2009 through 5.3% in 2010; 0.8 in 2011; 2.3% in 2012; 5% in 2013; 4.6 in 2014 and now the rock-bottom figure of 0.04% for 2015,” he said.

It again indicated that the stagnation in agriculture found expression in the importation of $1.5 billion of food stuff into the country in 2014, against a food import bill of $600 million in 2008.

The importation of fish, poultry, tomatoes and cooking oil all doubled between 2008 and 2015. The Minority also described as ‘badly’ the management of the energy sector since NDC took over the reins of government in 2009.

“Generation shortfalls, corrupt procurements, frequent power cuts, inefficiencies and unsustainable debts have led to five years of power outages”, he noted, adding “What is curious is that, the situation has gotten worse and there is no end in sight. This is in spite of the imposition of high cost emergency plants, corruptibly procured from Ameri and Karpower.

“Today, the energy sector faces an unprecedented financial crisis in Ghana’s history. The very existence of our biggest electricity generator, the Volta River Authority, is under serious threat, as its debts continue to increase.

“VRA’s (Volta River Authority) debts stand at US$1.53 billion as of March 2016. These debts which exclude current interest, roll-over fees and other charges are expected to hit $2 billion by end of this year, more than the entire assets of VRA.”

Putting all issues affecting the power sector together, the statement revealed that it was clear that President Mahama had failed to end dumsor, but the president blamed it on Nigeria and “publicly stopped ECG (Electricity Company of Ghana) from publishing a dumsor time table to allow for planning by industry and businesses contrary to law.

“President Mahama cannot buy fuel for electricity generation, he cannot address the generation shortfall, he cannot address inefficiencies in electricity distribution, he cannot fix dumsor and we must change course,” he noted.