• He said, COVID-19 is not as a result of the economic hardship
• He said, the current hardship is due to overspending during the election year
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been accused by his predecessor for seeking to justify his poor economic management with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to former President John Dramani Mahama, the poor and reckless management of the economy by the Akufo-Addo led administration is due to overspending on the 2020 General Elections and not the pandemic as the government want Ghanaians to believe.
“The government has attempted to conceal its appalling incompetence and recklessness in the management of the economy with the Covid-19 pandemic while the pandemic poses a global challenge to the global economy including ours.
“It is quite clear in our case, that it was the desire to win elections at all cost that got the government to engage in unbudgeted consumption expenditure to create an artificial feel-good factor before election 2020. It is this overspending that led to the very large deficit that has undermined the economy,” Mahama explained during a public lecture in Accra on Wednesday, November 10.
He indicated that other African countries were equally affected by the pandemic but they are keen on effectively managing their economy, thereby, reducing their debt to Gross Domestic Product ratio.
“Data from our neighbours and other comparative countries in sub-Saharan Africa who were also ravaged by the Covid -19 clearly shows that almost all of them kept their economies within manageable limits and have not been through the economic crisis that Ghana finds itself in today. Covid-19 did not affect us any more extraordinarily than it did to Cote D’ Ivoire yet their budget deficit for 2020 was 5.9 percent and their debt to GDP ratio stands at 49 percent. Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Niger and others have deficits below 7 percent while their debt to GDP is nowhere near the 80 percent that Ghana has recorded,” he said.
“The undeniable effects of Covid-19 notwithstanding, it is evident from the above, that the government placed its inordinate desire to win elections above prudent economic management and that is why Ghanaians are going through much suffering now. Long before Covid-19 struck, red flags had emerged, signalling mismanagement of the economy, we drew attention to this, but no corrective action was taken,” John Dramani Mahama noted.
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