<<Print>>

Vice Presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party has exposed himself over his skewed analysis on Ghana’s economic growth. Dr Mahamadu Bawumia claims Ghana’s economy has shrunk over the past eight years in spite of the heavy investments by government and the private sector and that the latest IMF/World Bank report on Ghana does not give too much hope.

Dr Bawumia who was commenting on a statement issued by government about the 2016 report and improvement in the Human Development Index, said the indices do not reflect in the pockets of ordinary citizens. He added that what Ghana achieved over the last seven years was recorded in Ivory Coast in a single year.

“Under NPP, Ghana had no oil and with only 20 billion cedis in taxes and loans between 2001 and 2008, Ghana’s GDP per capita increased from 440 dollars to 1,266 dollars. That is an increase of 187 percent. But under NDC, with 200 billion cedis from taxes and loans over the last 7years the GDP per capita rose from 1,266 dollars to 1,314 dollars which is an increase of 5.8 percent. Cote D’Iviore achieved this is one year” Dr Bawumia told Bernard Avle on the Accra based CITI FM breakfast show.

The former Governor of the Bank of Ghana who has been contradicting himself with figures on the economy maintained that the standard of living increased more under the NPP than the NDC. He added that what the NPP was able to do on average in three months, the NDC has taken 7-years to do.

Dr Bawumia who cleverly dogged several questions made an infantile argument by comparing the unit charges for electricity in the two countries without basing his analysis on the source and cost of generation.

“Consumers in Cote D’Iviore are paying 9cents per kilowatt but domestic consumers in Ghana are paying 19cents. Look at inflation, interest and so on,” He lamented.

Host of CITI FM’s morning show, Bernard Avle who was curious about his analysis referred him to the population of both countries and its correlation with figures he (Dr Bawumia) was churning but he simply said that is not the issue.

NPP’s Dr Bawumia sarcastically insisted the economy has shrunk from the 2011 figure of 15 percent to less than four percent.

It’s good to remind Dr Bawumia that records at the National Labour Department, (NLD) indicated that 78 companies in 2001 and 74 in 2002, 59 in 2003, 57 in 2004 and 64 in 2005 had filed for redundancy because of bad economic policies and high cost of production, while the President galloped over the seas across nations in search for investors to his 'Golden age of business'.

Acting Executive Director of the Association of Ghana Industries, Cletus Kosiba, at that time noted that “Ghanaian businesses are also chocking under heavy administrative procedures in addition to poor and high cost of utility services such as water and electricity”

He complained about corruption, inflexible labour laws, government's arbitrariness, archaic legislative and legal system hostile to private investment and adversarial attitude of the public sector towards the private sector and high interest rates.

Ardent NDC activist, Kwaku Asafo is surprised at Dr Bawumia especially for his references to policies under the Kufuor Administration, when he was a Deputy Governor of the Central Bank.

Kwaku Asafo is amazed at events that unfolded before the 2008 elections when Dr Bawumia claims without the benefit of oil production, economic growth increased from 3.7% in 2000 to 8.4% in 2008.

Then outgoing President Kufuor was publicly condemned when he said during the heat of the 2008 elections that Ghanaians complaining about hardship are lazy.

During the same period, then Minister of Information, Steven Asamoah Boateng obviously frustrated said those crying about hunger should go and eat Kokonte (cassava chips).

Dr Bawumia was in Ghana, at the Bank of Ghana as Deputy Governor when On July 8, 2011, Mr Asamoah Boateng was asked a simple question on Joy FM… “As to whether it was not outrageous for the nation to, in the midst of all the water shortages, the unimaginable power cuts and the litany of other needs, import medals at a total cost of ¢14 billion (fourteen billion Ghanaian cedis) or US$1.4 million”

He had this uncharitable response, “medals are not picked from the beaches. They are bought with money. He went on…”Even houses and cars are purchased for Miss Ghana beauty pageants”.

In May 2008, when Dr Bawumia was Nana Akufo Addo’s running mate, he heard former President Kufuor say in a nationwide television broadcast that he acknowledges that times were hard and hence his government had put together what he called a mitigation package to alleviate the hardship of the people.

Dr Bawumia in his analysis rubbished positive indicators in the 2015 UNDP Human Development Index report.

The following are captured in the latest report;

·         Ghana has achieved the Millennium Development Goal 1 target of reducing the proportion of poor people by half by 2015 in 2013- a clear two years ahead of the deadline.  

·         Ghana’ s mean years in  school (7.0 years) is higher and better than  that of Kenya (6.3 years), Nigeria (5.9 years) Cote d’ivoire (4.3 years) and Senegal (2.5 years).

·         Improvement has also been reported in the Adult Literacy rate which increased from 50.7% in the year 2008 to 76.6% in 2015. More impressive is the trend in Youth Literacy which more than doubled between 1991/92 and 1998/99, from 21.9% to 55.8%. Thereafter a further increase to 64.8% was reported in 2005/06 before it took a quantum leap to 80.5% in 2012/2013.

·         As far as completion rates are concerned, 99.6% of pupils enrolled at the primary school level complete while 73.5% of JHS students complete, up from 66% in 2008/9 academic year.

·         Life expectancy at birth increased from 56 years in 1990 to 58 and 60 years in 2000 and  2008 respectively (World Bank, 2015; World Health Organisation, 2016). By 2013 it had risen, by three years, to 63 years. Ghana’s current life expectancy at birth is higher than Nigeria (55 years), Cote d’ivoire (51.5 years) as well as the sub-Sahara Africa average (56.8 years). By these statistics Ghanaians on the average, live longer than their other West African counterparts.  

These indices are likely to improve as government continues to invest in infrastructure across all sectors. In health for example, over US$2billion has been spent on various projects that will increase the availability of hospital beds by 6,000.

Key among the projects are the University of Ghana Teaching Hospital, the Ridge Hospital and the Police Hospital, expansion of the Tamale Teaching, the recently commissioned Dodowa hospital just to mention a few and 1,260 CHPS compounds with government and donor resources.

Still in the health sector, there has been a deliberate policy to retool several health facilities with state of the art equipment. These include the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and several Polyclinics.

Many of these structures were none existent during the Kufuor regime. Dr Bawumia claims government has borrowed recklessly and is incompetent. That is why the NHIS has collapsed.

Dr Bawumia an intellectual, has ignored the reality that government subvention to the National Health Insurance Scheme increased from GHC183 million in 2008 to over GH¢1 billion in 2014.  A collapsed NHIS definitely won’t be making huge payments…delays in releasing disbursements cannot be generalized as a collapsed scheme. That indeed sends bad signals and exposes insincere analysis.

·         441,189 Ghanaian children in public basic schools benefitted from the school feeding programme in 2008 then sponsored by the Dutch government. Today about 1.7 million children are on the programme without donor support, that’s solely by the Government of Ghana

·         Again it’s a verifiable fact that in 2008, there were only 1,654 households beneficiaries of the LEAP project and that has been increased to over 144,000 beneficiary households today.

·         Four (4) Ghanaian pupils shared one core textbook previously. Today one (1) pupil has four (4) core text books;

The writer of this article is deliberately responding to some basic reasoning missed in Dr Bawumia’s generalizations.

In conclusion, Dr Bawumia must remember that under the Kufuor-led administration when he and Nana Akufo Addo campaigned on his record, the following had happened.

·         Signing of a loan agreement written in German without knowing and understanding the terms and conditions only for the then Finance Minister Hon. Osafo Marfo to make the excuse that he did understand German.

·         The IFC loan scam whose address ended up at a hair dressing salon in London and the CNTCI loan

·         Signing an agreement with a Brazilian company to take over Valco, subsequent Parliamentary approval only for the original Brazilian Company to distance itself less than 24 hours after it was approved

·         1.5 billion Cedis spent on diaries alone during the Ghana @ 50 celebrations.

·         Buying locomotives from the high interest $750 million Eurobond facility when there was not an inch of railway line. (How does he compare that to Komenda Sugar factory?)

Bawumia is right when he says governance is not propaganda. But he must accept Ghanaians are not gullible when he builds castles in the air. People will vote. Some may have made up their minds already but LIES CANT WIN ELECTIONS.

I REST MY CASE.