Dr. Apaak accuses Gov’t of destroying the Economy

The Akufo-Addo administration has destroyed the Ghanaian economy therefore, Ghanaians must punish the governing party in the 2024 general elections, Builsa South Member of Parliament Dr Clement Apaak has said.

In the view of Dr Apaak, the current government can best be described “as the worse tragedy ever to befall our nation.”

“This government has destroyed our economy and our environment, all for the personal gain of the ruling clan and its appendages. Ghanaians must punish NPP for generations,” he tweeted on Tuesday April 25.

The Akufo-Addo/Bawumia NPP gov’t can best be described as the worse tragedy ever to befall our nation. This gov’t has destroyed our economy and our environment, all for the personal gain of the ruling clan and its appendages. Ghanaians must punish NPP for generations. pic.twitter.com/TP0JXZ5Ziy

— Dr. Clement Abas Apaak (@DrApaak) April 24, 2023

Dr Apaak was commenting on the 2023 International Monetary Fund (IMF) Regional Economic Outlook Report (Sub-Saharan Africa), which stated that Ghana’s net international reserves were expected to end in 2023 at approximately three weeks of import cover (0.8 months).

The report predicted that the country’s reserves would increase to about 1.7 months of import cover in 2024.

Only Zimbabwe (0.2 months), South Sudan (0.5 months), and Ethiopia (0.6 months) in Sub-Saharan Africa are projected to have lower import cover than Ghana.

In March 2023, the Bank of Ghana reported that Ghana’s net international reserves had slightly improved to $2.62 billion, about 2.8 months of import cover in February 2023, up from $2.24 billion in December 2022, which was about 2.7 months of import cover.

However, the country’s Balance of Payment had a deficit of $3.63 billion, equivalent to approximately 5% of Gross Domestic Product by the end of February 2023.

Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) Dr Ernest Addison explained what led to the central bank to lose $3.63 billion in reserves.

Addressing the 110th Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) press conference in Accra on Monday, January 30, he explained that last year, the government was unable to go to the international capital market to raise funds.

But at the same time, the government needed to service its debts and pay for crude oil and other payments.

The funds that were used in making those payments, he said, were taken from the BoG’s reserves, leading to the loss of $3.6billion.

Dr Addison expressed optimism that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will approve Ghana’s agreement and start making disbursements by end of the first quarter of this year to shore up the reserves.

He said “We have gone very far with the staff-level agreement [with the IMF]. We hopefully should be seeing the end of the Domestic Debt Exchange. We are also making progress on the external side of the external debt restructuring, the necessary committees have all been formed. we are confident that by the end of the first quarter, we should be able to get the disbursements from the IMF to help augment the foreign exchange resources of the central bank.

“The reason why the government had to announce a debt standstill is that we needed to conserve the foreign exchange that we had. A lot of people do not recognize that even though we were not able to go to the capital market in 2022, we continued to service our debts, we continued to pay for oil, we continued to do other payments. Where did we get those resources from? It came from the reserves of the central bank, that is why we lost 3.6bn dollars in reserves.”

Dr Addison assured that measures had to be instituted to strengthen a stabilize the BoG reserve.

“What the debt standstill does is to sort of plug that leak, therefore going forward we do not expect to be losing reserves because of those types of payments at the rate at which we were losing reserves earlier.

“That also means that we should ensure that the central bank reserves is strengthed and stabilized over the next quarter or so, and then after the next quarter if these disbursements come through we should be able to start building reserves,” he said.

Source: 3news.com