The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has dismissed claims by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) that the Akufo-Addo’s government has incurred more debt on the public purse than any other government in the country’s history.
At what it described as the ‘True State of the Nation Address’, the NDC accused the NPP government of over borrowing and pushing the country’s public debt stock into unsustainable levels.
Chairman of the party, Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, who delivered the address, said the country accumulated the most debt under the current administration .
He stated that despite incurring huge debts on the public purse, the president and his government have nothing to show for it as they have been reckless in expending the country’s resources.
But in a counter press conference, Chairman of the governing party, Stephen Ayesu Ntim refuted the claims by the NDC as false.
“One of the central claims of the NDC’s false state of the nation address is that this government has over-borrowed. This is not true, but the NDC keeps repeating it,” he stated.
Mr. Ntim said the NDC’s governments especially under the Mahama’s administration rather accumulated the most debt.
According to him, the NPP, since taking over the reigns of governance, has only added 304 percent to Ghana’s debt stock as compared to 819 percent accumulated under the last 8-year rule of the NDC.
“Former President Kuffuor inherited a debt stock of approximately GHs5.4 billion in 2001 and added about 81 percent. The NDC inherited a debt stock of GHs 9.7 billion in 2009; by 2016, they increased it to GHs 122 billion. That represents 819 percent growth in the debt stock.
The NPP government, which the NDC characterises as having over-borrowed, has added just about 304 percent to the debt stock”.
He pointed out that the 304 percent increase in the debt stock under the NPP government included costs incurred in the financial sector clean-up and during the Covid-19 pandemic, both of which were absent during the reign of the NDC governments.
Mr. Ntim faulted the opposition party’s use of nominal figures in computing the country’s debt stock as he said it was a deliberate attempt to distort facts and misinform Ghanaians.
“The NDC likes to promote this misinformation by computing our debt stock using nominal figures because it hides their unprecedented rate of debt accumulation. The best way to compute our debt to see which government has borrowed more, is by using the rate accumulation”.
