Member of Parliament for Buem Constituency, Kofi Adams has reiterated that government’s recent economic woes pre-date the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to him, in an economic sense, the pandemic has rather created an avenue for the NPP administration to make more money.
The government has consistently attributed the country’s economic crisis to COVID-19 and the Russian/Ukrainian war.
The government said that this was part of the factors that crippled the economy which forced Ghana to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout.
After several months of debt restructuring and negotiations with external debt creditors, on June 24, Finance Minister Dr Mohammed Amin Adam announced the completion of Ghana’s debt restructuring programme.
According to the Member of Parliament for Karaga, the government has successfully restructured its debt of $5.1 billion with these creditors, in addition to concluding the restructuring of $13.1 billion with Eurobond holders.
Addressing attendees at a UK Town Hall meeting, Dr Amin Adam highlighted that these efforts have resulted in savings of $8 billion dollars for the country.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on June 29, Mr Bona said the government’s excuse does not hold water.
He explained that, the economy was already crippling and COVID-19 only exposed the extent of the damage.
The legislator said the AG’s report confirms these assertions.
As such, he said the government should not be pleased saying that they have made some savings during negotiation with external creditors because they had mismanaged the economy.
“The Auditor General’s special report as far as covid is concerned makes nonsense of anyone who says covid is to blame for what happened.
“Even before Covid we were already having challenges. When Covid came as a disease what were we told, that persons with underlining conditions suffered more than those without underlining conditions.
“So if your economy had underlining situations covid off course will come and make your situation worse. The data shows that before Covid, Ghana was in a bad situation. Immediately we existed the IMF programme that was an opportunity for them to do what they wanted and never invested these resources in appropriate areas,” he told host Samson Lardy Anyenini.
He stressed that the covid gave government the opportunity to raise money it could not raised on its own. Therefore it was unfair to blame covid for the crisis.