Vice President, Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has ridiculed the economic management team of the erstwhile John Mahama administration, saying they do not come close to the current managers of the economy.
“In fact can anyone remember the NDC economic management team? I’m sure they themselves cannot remember who a single member of their economic management team was,” Dr. Bawumia told delegates attending the governing New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) 25th Annual Delegates’ Conference in Cape Coast in the Central Region, on Saturday, August 26, 2017.
He assured the delegates that the “Akufo-Addo has replaced incompetence with competence with the management of the economy” boasting of persons making up the current economic management team including former Finance Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo, and Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta.
“The era of reckless borrowing…thankfully is over,” he said while giving the assurance that government expects debt to GDP ratio to drop from 73% to 71% at the end of the year.
He announced, implementation of a number of campaign promises such as the Free Senior High School programme, reinstatement of allowances for nursing and teacher training allowances which he said, will happen “in a few weeks (September)” when the academic calendar begins.
Dr. Bawumia jeered at the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) which kicked against the policy on the grounds that it was not feasible.
“When you think impossibility you will act in impossibility,” he said indicating the NDC and then President John Mahama “were thinking in the realm of impossibility; they were not thinking in the realm of Nana Akufo-Addo”.
According to him, the achievements of the Akufo-Addo government which was barely eight months old, “is a manifestation of competent economic management”.
He said the re-profiling of the economy has led to an extension of tenor with the issuance of a 15-year bond which the first in the country’s history against the 10-year old bond issued by the previous administration.
He noted that the yield curve at the primary issuance of domestic bonds has also improved significantly compared to the trend in recent years- Provisional estimates show that the trade account recorded a surplus of US$1,429 million for the first half of 2017 due to a significant increase in export earnings combined with lower imports, the Vice President stated.