Thanks For Endorsing Mahama's Projects, But How Will A 2month War Impact On Ghana? - Terkper Shades Bawumia
Former Finance Minister Seth Terkper has reacted to Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia's address to the nation, Thursday, accusing the latter failing to plan for the future and blaming external factors for the country's current economic predicament.
Dr Bawumia, in a presentation at a forum organized by the National Tertiary Students Confederacy (TESCON) at Kasoa in the Central Region, attributed Ghana’s rising debt stock to the COVID-19 pandemic and the banking sector clean-up.
“Between 2019 and 2021 Ghana’s debt to GDP increased by 17.6 percentage points of GDP. It should be noted that without the 15.1 billion of the exceptional items – the financial sector and then the energy and Covid Ghana’s debt to GDP would have been about 68 percent instead of the current 80 percent", he noted.
Justifying monies borrowed so far, he said: “The projects that we have undertaken from the loans over the years, you will see that we borrowed to build the University of Environment Science and Sustainable Development, that is part of the debt, the Pokuase Interchange is part of the debts, the Tema Mpakadan Railway is part of our debt, the Kumasi Airport Phase 2 is part of our debt, Tamale Airport is part of our debt.”
Reacting to this in a tweet, Seth Terkper said:
"Borrowing and infrastructure: grateful to the Veep for highlighling the NDC's projects in the debt stock. He just debunked the notion that our borrowing did not have any significant underlying assets or infrastructure. Remember, there was denial of their existence not long ago."
"The fiscal deficit in 2016 was 6.1% (see MOF correction in March 2021 Statement) without NPP's "offsets" of ghc5 billion for 2016. The NPP's deficits exclude "bailout costs", which without a provision in 2017 (despite ESLA) is still the lowest?"
<<Print>>