John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has criticised the Akufo-Addo administration for borrowing so much and yet has nothing to show for.
The NDC flag bearer says in six (6) years, the Akufo-Addo-led administration with Ken Ofori-Atta as Finance Minister borrowed over US$13billion from the Eurobond market but cannot pinpoint any major infrastructure the nation benefited from.
John Mahama, speaking during an engagement with members of GUTA and the NDC Monday, April 09, 2024, touted his administration for borrowing US$3.5billion but bequeathed the nation with a lot of infrastructure.
He bemoaned how the reckless borrowing of the government has ballooned the nation’s debt and created many economic misfortunes for citizens.
“Today the debt exchange, domestic debt exchange and all those exchanges are because of borrowing too much. In four years as President, we went to the Eurobond market for US$3.5billion, that’s all we took and so all the infrastructure you saw us do and everything, it was for credit US$3.5billion and yet US$13.5billion show me exactly what has transformed in this country in terms of infrastructure? Our roads are worse, everything is much worse than it was,” he said.
He advised GUTA to actively get involved in the political discourse of the country, lamenting how the NDC Minority was left as a lone voice to criticise the government at the time it was borrowing recklessly.
“We must not only be interested in buying and selling and our trading. We must also be interested in what the Finance Minister is doing. We must be interested in looking at the budget that is being presented. And that’s why I expected that GUTA would have joined us from 2019 when we started raising the red flag.
“A Finance Minister went on a borrowing spree and in 6 years he borrowed US$13.5billion from the Eurobond market. Every year our Minority was saying it in Parliament that ‘you’re over borrowing, this thing will lead to crisis’ but we were the lone voices. Everybody else was quiet,” he lamented.
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