Convene forum to address economic challenges - Mahama
Former President John Dramani Mahama has reiterated the need for the government to convene a forum to tap the brains and expertise of knowledgeable people and stakeholders to build consensus on the country’s economic plan.
“As I have indicated previously, the government must, as a matter of urgency, borrow a leaf from our sound approach toward the challenges we faced in 2015,” he stated.
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In a statement issued in Accra yesterday, Mr Mahama said “the knowledge shared at Senchi crystallised into our Homegrown Fiscal Consolidation Programme, which we eventually presented to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for support.
“The IMF agreed entirely with our homegrown strategy whose implementation restored stability to the economy and laid the strong foundations that this government, just as the World Bank in 2016 forecasted, profited from between 2017 and 2020,” he added.
Crisis
He said the Ghanaian economy was in deep crisis, “a crisis marked by huge budget deficits, an unsustainable public debt, rising inflation, a rapidly depreciating currency, ever rising cost of living and a loss of confidence by both domestic and international investor communities.”
That, he said, had resulted in hardships and suffering for Ghanaians, especially those within vulnerable groups.
He said it was clear that urgent intervention was required to avert a total collapse of the economy.
Mr Mahama said the government had banked all its hopes on the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy), which was neither adequate nor viable as a sustainable response to the crisis.
Demonstration
In a related development, Justice Agbenorsi, reports that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) will on Thursday, February 10, 2022 embark on a demonstration dubbed “Yen tua”, to wit “we won’t pay” against attempts to introduce the electronic transfer levy (E-Levy)
It has, therefore, called on the general public to rally behind it and resist the levy.
The National Youth Organiser of the NDC, Mr George Opare Addo, who addressed a news conference in Accra last Monday, described the E-Levy as a nuisance tax which ought to be rejected.
The NDC was joined by the Justice 4 Ghana advocacy group led by political activist, Mr Bernard Mornah; Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA); Coalition of Nation Builders Corps (NABCO) trainees, Coalition of Concerned University Students, among other groups.
The rationale behind the demonstration, Mr Addo said, was to back the Minority in Parliament who were fighting to reject the E-Levy, demand an end to the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) strike, highlight the grievances of NABCO trainees and fight taxes on petroleum products.
Businesses
Mr Mornah said the E-Levy, if implemented, would collapse businesses.
For that reason, he said, his advocacy group had decided to join the NDC, adding: “We will join in our numbers to tell the government that enough is enough”.
The Executive Director of ASEPA, Mr Mensah Thompson, alleged the revenue projection from the implementation of the E-Levy was only a collateral for the government to borrow more money.
