John Dramani Mahama, former president and flagbearer of opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has taken a swipe at his successor’s decision to print new currency notes on the eve of joining a sub-regional monetary regime.
Mr Mahama who was speaking at the 38th Anniversary celebration of the 31 December Revolution at Winneba in the Central region said he found it interesting that the government will decide to print the new notes when it had declared support to join the ECO, a proposed West African currency regime, next year.
I was reading in the news two days ago and they say Ghana has declared support to join ECO next year in 2010 so if you are going to join the eco and adopt the new West Africa money system then what is the need to print 100 Ghana notes, 200 Ghana notes on the eve when you are going to join the ECO, he questioned.
He described the decision to print the 100 and 200 Ghana Cedi notes as one that couldn’t have been made by any government thinking logically except one that was influenced by other factors such as kickbacks.
Is it because somebody just wants to print the notes so that he gets his kickbacks or his, whatever, agent fees or something; because otherwise, it doesn’t make any logical sense, he said.
The former president also said the decision to print the notes flew in the face of the country’s drive for a cashless society, saying the government was making it easier for people to carry large sums of money on them.
We say that you cannot clear more than 5,000 Cedis off the counter because we want people to use less cash in transactions, and then, at the same time you go and print 100 Ghana Cedi notes and 200 Ghana Cedi notes; you cannot understand any reason in hell that will make any government thinking logically do something like that. You want to make it easier for people to carry huge sums of cash when we say we are building a cashless society, Mr Mahama said in his address.