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Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako has lashed out at the Minority in Parliament for predicting doom about the economy.

The Minority, on Monday, organized a roundtable breakfast discussion on the 2018 Budget and Economic Policy in Accra, where they claimed the government's economic policy for 2018 will potentially revert the country to the status of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) by the year 2019.

Ranking Member on the Finance Committee and Minority Spokesperson on Finance, Cassiel Ato Forson indicated the country's public debt had hiked up from GHC 122.6 billion in January this year to GHC 138.6 billion as of June 2017.

Watch video of Minority's press conference below:



Addressing the Minority claims, Kweku Baako stated emphatically that the Akufo-Addo government inherited "an economy that was hugely challenged, if not in coma" from the erstwhile Mahama administration.

However, he believed that though the government inherited a country characterized by severe deficits, its quest for possible ways to revive the economy is remarkable.

In doing so, he held that the government has rolled out several socio-economic interventions, one of which he mentioned is the government's flagship programme "1 District, 1 Factory" which funds have been sourced to commence the project, to salvage the economy.

"...everybody knows the government inherited an economy that was hugely challenged, if not in coma”, he said on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo".

Mr. Baako further put to shame the doomsayers of the economy predicting a gloomy situation come 2018 saying "there’s no perfect system out there. I haven’t seen any perfect budget before. Whatever it is, this 2018 budget will show that there were areas especially revenue generation and so forth where we have difficulties. So, we will look at the ways and means the government will show how to deal with those challenges that came in 2017".