The Deputy Minister for Energy has attributed the unprecedented increase in the country’s debt to the poor performance of the Ghanaian cedi on the market.
Speaking to Nana Kwadwo Jantuah on Nhyira FM’s morning show, Collins Adomako Mensah who is also the Member of Parliament for Afigya Kwabre North Constituency refuted the claim that reckless borrowing by his government resulted in the current Gh¢658.4 billion debt.
According to him, factors like the Cedi depreciation play a role in the country’s debt management since most of the loans are acquired in foreign denominations.
” Let me say that Gh¢28.9bn of the total Gh¢46bn added to our debt from January this year, is as a result of the cedi depreciation and not borrowing. Although we have domestic loans, but majority of our loans comes from foreign countries whose currency performs better than our cedi”
When quizzed on the recent power outages, the minister intimated that his government has managed the power sector efficiently than the previous government. He believes that the current situation cannot discredit their performance in the power sector.
“Let’s face fact, there has not been a single dumsor for the past seven years, except the recent challenges which cannot be compared to the outages we had before this government came to power”.