Former President John Dramani Mahama has challenged the government to come clean on the true state of the economy having admitted that the country is going through headwinds.
Describing the state of the economy as terrible, Mahama said the current situation is one that Ghana has never before witnessed but that journalists should continue to put the government in check.
Mahama was speaking on Friday, October 21, 2022, when he met with leadership of the Ghana Journalists Association, GJA, who had paid a courtesy call on him at his office in Accra.
“The current state of our economy is terrible, we have never in all our history been in a place like this and I think that it is the role of GJA and all journalists to be even more vigilant at this time when the country is filled with such dire economic challenges,” he stated.
According to him, the opposition had long warned that the economy as it was being run risked collapse but the government failed to pay heed.
“We raised this red flag that the direction in which the economy was going to crash. I talked personally about creative accounting, this Finance Minister was hiding huge liabilities and giving a rosy picture of the economy.
“The government should come clean and tell us what is the state of the economy. You must put everything on the table, that is why I called for a national dialogue,” which gathering he said will bring the best brains together to chart a way out of the doldrums.
The economy is facing major headwinds that have been characterized by galloping inflation, consistent depreciation of the cedi and general high cost of living and of doing business.
The government is hoping to reach a deal with the International Monetary Fund, IMF, for an economic support programme aimed at shoring up the economy and easing the burden on ordinary Ghanaians.
President Akufo-Addo and his government have come under heavy scrutiny for failing to address the current economic challenges in the country.
The prices of goods and services have been continuously rising all year round, with inflation currently hovering over 37 per cent.
The Ghana cedi has been ranked the worst currency in the world among 148 currencies tracked by Bloomberg, overtaking Sri Lanka's rupee, having depreciated by nearly 50 per cent so far in 2022.
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John Dramani Mahama