Bawumia’s new position on borrowing shameful – Minority

The Minority in Parliament has taken a swipe at the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s new appetite for borrowing describing it as shameful because he criticized the Mahama government for same reasons.
Speaking on Eyewitness News on Tuesday, the Deputy Minority Leader, James Avedzi Klutse, said “It is shameful for Bawumia to say in the past that we don’t need to borrow because we have all the resources here and now saying that we need to borrow and borrow responsibly, that is the problem I have with him.”
Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia at the closing ceremony of the two-day National Policy Summit on Trade and Industry on Tuesday said the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) will continue the trajectory of borrowing to help grow the Ghanaian economy but will do that responsibly and not recklessly.
“A lot of people misunderstand when we say we are going to be responsible, it doesn’t mean that we are not going to borrow money, it only means that we are going to borrow responsibly and not recklessly,” he added.
The Vice President who in the past lambasted the former government’s voracious appetite for foreign loans at the summit argued that “no government can say they won’t borrow money, that is ridiculous but you have to borrow responsibly and not recklessly.”
But Mr. Avedzi on Eyewitness News accused Dr. Bawumia of deception saying “reality is dawning on him” because “he knows that what he said when he was in opposition as a running mate was meant to deceive the people of Ghana so that he can get the votes, he’s got it now and he is now telling the people that he will borrow.”
“The Vice President now and while he was the running mate for the NPP was emphatic on the issue about borrowing in Ghana saying that the country need not borrow and that we have the resources here in Ghana and that when they win power they will not borrow.  Today he is now the Vice President, he is now giving a different interpretation to what he said; he is now defining that to be they will be doing responsible borrowing. In the first place who did irresponsible borrowing? Every government borrow and this borrowing is approved by the Parliament and in the case of Ghana, the previous Parliament was made up of both a NPP and NDC members and every loan that was taken by the previous government was approved by Parliament,” he noted.