Member of Parliament for Ejisu and Deputy Minister of Finance, John Kumah, has iterated that external factors damaged Ghana’s booming economy fostered by the ruling New Patriotic Party.
The Deputy Finance Minister told Umaru Sanda Amadu on Citi TV’s Face to Face that Ghana’s financial condition worsened as a result of global crises such as the breakout of Covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Mr. Kumah stated that external disruptive forces exacerbated the country’s debt issue, prompting the Minister of Finance to propose a debt restructuring plan known as Ghana’s Domestic Debt Exchange Programme.
“We got here through very difficult global circumstances. The economy was doing well before Covid-19 struck and when Covid came, it did not only hit Ghana, it hit the entire world and there were disruptions in supply chains, the introduction of lockdowns, and things generally became expensive, and even now that we are out of the pandemic, one of the symptoms of Covid-19 in every country is high inflation rates. In Ghana, for example, we have seen how inflation levels have shot up from 12 percent to 40.4 percent in October.
“Unfortunately, we were further hit in 2022 by the needless war in Russia and Ukraine which affected energy and that has led to increases in the prices of fuel at the pumps. The trotro driver has to pay more and translated that into increases in fares for passengers and for everyone.”
Mr. Kumah went on to say that the highly criticized debt exchange scheme is just one of the measures the government is doing to restructure the country’s debt and nursing the economy back to health.
“Any objective observer will tell you that, globally, we are heading toward a recession and that means further difficult situations for everyone, so we have to do something and that is why Ghana is making processes to get a program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and one of the conditions to meet the Fund’s program is debt sustainability.”