It is not true we’ve over borrowed – NPP
The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) says the claim by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) that the government has over borrowed since assuming office in 2017 cannot be true.
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According to the NPP, it is a false claim designed by the NDC to put the party in a bad light for political reasons.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra today (April 4, 2023), the National Chairman of the NPP, Stephen Ayesu Ntim, said the NPP administration has managed all aspects of the economy better than the NDC would have done.
For him, if it was the NDC that was in power, Ghanaians would have been worse off.
“One of the central claims of the NDC's false state of the nation address is that this government has over-borrowed. This is not true, but the NDC keeps repeating it,” Mr Ntim noted.
He said the opposition NDC likes to promote misinformation by computing the debt stock using nominal figures because it hides their [NDC] unprecedented rate of debt accumulation.
According to him, the best way to compute the debt to see which government has borrowed more, is by using the rate of accumulation.
Mr Ntim explained that former President Kufuor inherited a debt stock of approximately GHc5.4 billion in 2001 and added about 81 percent.
That, Mr Ntim said, the NDC inherited a debt stock of GHc 9.7 billion in 2009; by 2016, they increased it to GHc 122 billion, adding “that represents 819 percent growth in the debt stock.”
For him, the NPP government, which the NDC characterizes as having over-borrowed, has added just about 304 percent to the debt stock, and that “the 304 per cent of the total accumulated debt under this government includes the cost of the banking sector cleanup, energy sector debt payment and Covid-19 debt.”
He also indicated that the Akufo-Addo led-NPP government better managed the country’s Cedi than the NDC, saying “We managed the Cedi better before the pandemic and the War. The NPP managed the Cedi, with an average depreciation of 6.8% from 2017 to 2021, compared to the NDC's record of 18% average depreciation from 2013 to 2016.”
Attached below is a copy of the statement