The National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress, Sammy Gyamfi, has stated that Ghana’s economic woes were not primarily caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis as has been perpetuated by the government.
According to him, the economy was already in a bad state before the global pandemic.
He stated that government should be candid and frank about the challenges of the economy to find lasting solutions to its problems.
Speaking on JoyNews’ AM show on September 19, 2022, he said “It is time for you to be candid with the people and with the investor community because until you diagnose a problem accurately and you diagnose a problem accurately and you diagnose a problem, the government will continue on its path of fiscal indiscipline and financial recklessness to where we are currently.”
He stressed that “these diplomatic narratives don’t help” therefore “it is important to be candid and frank.”
Sammy Gyamfi further explained that Ghana’s ballooning public debt has become highly unsustainable even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
Ghana’s public debt currently stands at ¢393.4bn as of June 2022 representing about 78.3% of Gross Domestic Product.
“Your public debt is no longer sustainable, whereas we were using GH¢10billion to service our debt in 2016, and now we are using over GH¢50 billion to service your debt. Even before COVID, it had increased from 10 billion to 37 billion, we were using about 90% of our domestic revenue to service our debt. When people talk about CoVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war, being the reason, we are where we are I laugh. Because Ghana is not an island," he explained.
“COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war only exacerbated an already bad economy,” he said.
Sammy Gyamfi is Comms Director of NDC