At the turn of the year 2016, Ghana’s public debts stock stood at GH120 billion. That is to suggest the before the current President Nana Akufo Addo’s administration took office in 2017, the stockpile of Ghana’s debts was below a GH25 billion threshold. However, after six years of the current administration, our debts have risen to a whopping GHC600 billion.
Within the same period, Ghana’s debt to GDP also increased from 56% in 2016 to 103% till date, this author has discovered from research. According to the opposition National Democratic Congress, the situation has been occasioned by the fact that “the President and his Economic Management Team actively colluded with the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori Atta, for the latter to benefit directly from these borrowings through numerous transaction fees, schemes and scams from the bonds Ghana issued.”
The stated position of the NDC is contained in what the NDC said it was their True State of the Nation address document. That document was a direct response to President Akufo Addo’s State of the Nation address to Ghana’s Parliament on March 8th, 2023. The NDC position paper was read chairman, Johnson Aseidu Nketia. It must be stressed that former Special Prosecutor, Martin Alamisi Amidu was the first to hint that Databank, an investment bank owned partly by the finance minister has been serving as transactional advisors to many monetary transactions engaged in by the current administration.
That pre-supposes that Databank take a percentage fee on such foreign fiscal transactions where Databank is used as the medium of Ghana’s foreign transaction deposit. After the end of year, 2017 Ghana’s annual debt increased by GHC20, 000 million an equivalent of $4,529 million; while in 2018, our accumulated debt increased by GHC173,100 million, meaning Ghana added GH33,100 million to her debts stock at the end of the 2018 fiscal year. That translate into $6,867 million.
A further GHC218,200 million was added to the GH173,100 million that was recorded in 2018; that means an increase of GH45100 during the 2019 fiscal year, and that translates into $8,150 million. The country’s debts increment continued in 2020. In the year ending (2020) our debts figure increased by GH73,400 million which run into $12, 743 million. In 2021, a further GH351, 800 million was added to our stock debts pile. That means GH60,200 million was added to our already growing debts. That is in the equivalence of $10,023 million.
Then, in 2022, Ghana’s debts increased to GH575,700 which is an increment of some GHC223,900million by the end of the 2022 fiscal year. That also translates into some $26,108 million in dollar denomination. So, within the six-year period, Ghana’s debts stockpile increased by GH455,700 billion, an equivalent of $68,420 billion. Further findings by this author show that the figures arose because of overspending in government expenditure.
For instance, many analysts wonder why the President of the Republic would be traveling on luxurious hired private jets on a minimum cost of $14,000 and maximum cost of $18,000 per hour for several months. Meanwhile, the country’s private jet had just been renovated at an expensive cost. Others opined that our President should have been modest in his traveling because of the precarious economic situation Ghana finds herself.
After all, many of his colleagues in Southern African countries whose economies are more resilient than that of Ghana, travel overseas using commercial flights. There is also the argument that many of the cost involved with the construction or refitting of roads are not the right figures as the ruling government would let Ghanaians to believe and the quotations although fall short of the actual amount used to fix the roads, the inflated figures are added to the country’s debts pile when in fact, that shouldn’t have been the case.
This is NDC’s take on the subject: “It is a tragedy that the president would classify routine road repairs such as re-sealing, re-shaping, pot-hole filling and re-graveling as new roads. The claim that this government has constructed over 11, 000 kilometers of new roads is false and should be completely disregarded.”
There is also the over-flogged issue of the president running an over-bloated administration, where his appointees ride some of the most luxurious vehicles around, draw fuel for free while other quasi-public officials also run very expensive lifestyles including being given free coupons for fuel. This aspect of excessive spending has been featuring in the annual reports of the Ghanaian Auditor General with no action. Yet, with all of such borrowing, Ghana is again on the heels of the International Monetary Fund pleading for a $3 billion loan.
Source: OperaNews