Kwarteng Denies Joy Report

Kwaku Kwarteng

Kwaku Kwarteng, Policy Advisor of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has described as misleading a 15 th May 2012 Joy FM report suggesting that a UNDP research cited the Kufuor administration for neglecting agriculture and spending twice as much on the military.

There is no such finding in the African Human Development Report 2012 as reported by Joy FM, he stated in a reaction.

According to page 53 of the report, where Joy FM picked its story, 'Cumulative Military spending' and 'Agricultural Research & Development spending' for the period 2000 to 2008, of the 19 countries covered, only one country, Mauritius spends more on its agricultural Research & Development than on military as a whole. The report has no information whatsoever on spending on agriculture as a whole.

'And there is no indictment of the Kufuor administration for

spending twice as much on the military as it did on agriculture between 2001 and 2008. Nor was there an indictment of the NDC administration for spending twice as much on military as it did on agriculture in the year 2000,' he said.

The Joy FM story, he stated, 'smacks of deliberate misrepresentation. In the said 6.00 pm news bulletin, this misrepresentation was pointed out to the station. And yet, in the 6.00 am news bulletin and on Myjoyonline the following day, the station went ahead and reported the following.

'According to the report, cumulative budgetary spending between 2000 and 2008 showed almost twice as much spending on the military as compared to agric, particularly in the area of research and sector development.'

The meaning of the Joy FM report is that spending on the military was twice as much as agriculture. And that this observation was particularly pronounced in the area of research and sector development. There is nothing like that in the whole report. And please note the cunning replacement of the phrase 'Research and Development' in the

UNDP report with the phrase 'Research and Sector Development' in the Joy Fm report.

The insertion of the word 'sector' completely changes the meaning of the original phrase as it was used in the UNDP report, he said.