It’s not govt’s fault that Covid forced private sector to lay off workers – Amoah

Member of Parliament for Nhyieaso, Dr Stephen Amoah has said Ghana is going through challenges due to factors that are beyond the control of the government.

He stated that economies around the world are all facing challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic as well as the geopolitical tension between Russia and Ukraine.

He was reacting to a comment by Former President John Dramani Mahama that the Akufo-Addo has mismanaged the economy.

Mr Mahama had said “hardship in the country has led the nation to a scale we have never witnessed in the last 30-years of our fourth republic.

“Daily price increases, fuel price adjustments and nose-diving currency which has rather arrested the person who said he had arrested it. The dollar has rather arrested him. So we are looking for him we can’t find him. We will ask the IGP if he has the key so that we could find where our Vice President was.”

“We are gathered at the time when our country is facing economic and social hardship. The Akufo-Addo led government that came to power on the back of mouth-watering promises to make life better for Ghanaians and ensure rapid development of our country has so badly mismanaged the economy. We have been plunged into the most debilitating economic crisis in our four decades,”

Reacting to him, Dr Stephen Amoah said “Nobody disputes the fact that Ghana, just like any other country around the globe is going through some sort of hardships and economic crisis. I think we should look at other places if this is not true. For about forty years now, US is experiencing the highest inflationary rate, UK moved from 1 to 4, which is about 200 per cent. So we need to analyze all these things in the context that we are talking about then we can do proper trend or comparative analyses. We even have some of the economic parameters still doing far better than what we took over.

“So, I think the former President, as much as he is actually saying what is prevailing in terms of hardships in the system, which that one I agree, he is rather doing politics more than trying to analyze issues in the right context and offer better alternative. If you go this way then we will all move beyond probably our professional ethics and performance. Even today that policy rate has been increased by about 250 basis points, it is still far lower than what we took over, lending rate is still far lower than what we took over. The economy has met uncontrollable global factors, this is a fact.

“If you have an economy that went through over 22 months of impaired productivity which is not your fault, is it government’s fault that restaurants and shops had to close down? I don’t think it was our fault that private sector had to sack about over forty thousand workers, I don’t think it is the fault of this government that fuel prices moved all-time high, these are major issues around the globe. Under Mahama we didn’t have these problems with these same causative factors, no but what happened? We had lending rate moving to about forty percent” he told Accra based Joy FM on Monday March 21.

Source: 3news.com|Ghana