‘Stop blaming rating agencies and own up to your failures’ — Bernard Mornah tells Akufo-Addo

Former National Chairman of the People's National Convention (PNDC) Bernard Mornah has urged President Akufo-Addo to take responsibility for his failure to competently manage the economy rather than blaming rating agencies.

According to the former PNC chairman, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration's "reckless" policy decisions informed the rating agencies to downgrade Ghana to junk status.

Speaking to TV3, Bernard Mornah bemoaned how President Akufo-Addo has blamed everything from Covid-19 pandemic to the Russia-Ukraine war for the woes of the country.

“Yesterday again, President Akufo-Addo took the opportunity to lament, to lambast and lampoon rating agencies and blame Russia-Ukraine and blame Covid-19 for the economic mess that we are faced with. Secondly, this is a president that is living in a different world because he failed to blame his own reckless economic policies and policy decisions that have landed our nation where we are and so when you have a government that is failing to look at the immediate causes, the homegrown causes that put us in the kind of difficulty that we have.

“If we didn’t run our economy that low, the rating agencies will not be emboldened to run us or to rate us the way they have or to run rough on us and so I find it a bit strange that we have a President who simply says that look, don’t blame me for anything just blame other people, other institutions, other agencies for the mess that we have,” Bernard Mornah stated.

Speaking at the 30th African Export-Import Bank meeting held in Accra, the President described as reckless the consistent downgrades of Ghana’s economy by credit rating agencies.

He argues that their actions have contributed to the country’s current economic woes.

“I can comfortably and convincingly say this as the AU champion for African financial institutions and leader of a country, which recently had to deal with one of the most difficult periods in his post-independence history, difficulties which were exacerbated by the reckless behaviour of rating agencies that engaged in pro-cyclical downgrades shutting Ghana out of capital markets and turning it liquidity crisis into a solvency crisis,” President Akufo-Addo said.