Founder and President of the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, Franklin Cudjoe, has criticised the government’s supposed Economic Management Team (EMT) for the financial haircuts it gave Ghanaians.
The people which constituted the economic brains of the party, which the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, described as a ‘solid team’ after the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was elected into power in 2016, according to Mr. Cudjoe, has betrayed the nation.
He explained that despite their prowess as professed by the presidential candidate of the NPP, they only turned to be “impotent liquids” that deprived people of their hard earned ransoms.
In an excerpt from a yet to be published satire titled; ‘Apostles of make-believe, sellers of snake oil and serpent godmothers’ by the President of the leading think tank in Ghana, which he shared on his social media Monday, November 25, 2024, he established why Ghanaians should take the words of this government with a pinch of salt.
According to him, although the government with its EMT promised not to give Ghanaians any haircuts, it ended up taking people’s hard earned money which rendered many in deplorable conditions. 
The Akufo-Addo government in September 2023 introduced the Ghana government haircut as part of its Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) to restructure the government’s debts with local bondholders.
The policy was carried out in response to years of economic crisis, overstretched borrowing, and a default in debt repayment by the government in December 2022. The country’s inflation rate had peaked at 40.4% in October 2022, where interest payments consumed 70 to 100% of government revenues.
A haircut is a reduction in the value of an asset, expressed as a percentage. For instance, if one has the sum of GHC100,000.00 and receives a 20% haircut, it is treated as if it is worth GHC80,000.00.
