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Deputy Finance Minister, John Kumah has hit back at the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) for casting a gloomy picture of the economy.

A member of Parliament’s Select Committee on Finance, John Abu Jinapor claims the economy is headed in a shutdown direction if nothing is done to reverse it.

Speaking at a town hall meeting held in Kumasi, the Ashanti Regional capital, the Member of Parliament for Yapei Kusawgu constituency said: “The size of your GDP does not service your debt, it is your revenue. If you look at a country like Japan, their debt to GDP is like 100 percent but because their interest rate is just about 1 percent or 0.5 percent, they are able to pay and also they are able to generate revenue in order to pay”.

“This 80 percent GDP we are seeing is a tip of the iceberg, go and look at our total revenue or more importantly our tax revenue, then you get to know that this country is indeed on the path to a total shutdown and a total collapse...It’s very serious and anybody who is sincere and looks at our figures will tell you that this economy is on life support and sooner than later if nothing is done to correct all these measures the Ghana economy will face imminent collapse.”

Reacting to this in an interview on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo', John Kumah asked the NDC to stick to facts and not propaganda.

"Where did you get your figures? It's not true that debt to GDP (ratio) is 80 percent. We should be fair to the figures. It's not true the economy is going to crash. As for these prophets of doom; they're always fond of making comments like this...What shows the economy is crashing?