The dreams of the founding fathers of this country is not what is being realised today as a result of the abysmal leadership Ghana has experienced in recent generations, Togbe Afede XIV, has held.
The Agbogbomefia of the Asogli State says the relative peace being enjoyed in the country should be credited to the patience of Ghanaians.
He has lamented over the poor state of development in the country despite the abundance of natural resources across the length and breadth of Ghana.
The challenges, he indicated, have been brought upon the state by ‘despicably dishonest, corrupt, reckless, arrogant and divisive leadership.”
In an epistle titled “The Bank of Ghana Has Failed Us”, issued Tuesday, December 26, 2023, Togbe cited a previous article he released the preceding year which highlighted how Ghana’s woes are self inflicted following the resources at the disposal of leadership and what could have been done with them.
He bemoaned the lack of application of prudence to judiciously distribute the resources in the interest of all, plunging the nation in a mess, notwithstanding the human and material resources available.
“In my December 2022 article, “Our Self-Inflicted Monumental Economic Crisis”, I presented my thoughts on the reasons why we, Ghanaians, find ourselves in this undeserved economic mess, given our massive human and material resource endowments.
“The Ghana we have today is obviously not what our founding fathers dreamt of. We have failed woefully but have pretended otherwise. Instead of giving hope, our leaders have created a frightening sense of helplessness among the populace, especially the youth,” he reiterated in portions of his article.
He also reechoed an assertion “in December 2021, during a courtesy call by the Speaker of Parliament, Ghana would have filed for bankruptcy if it were a company. This was effectively what we did when we went back to the IMF for bailout and implemented the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP). We eventually defaulted on our debts. Holders of Government bonds suffered massive losses, and the outlook remains dim.”
The overlord of the Asogli State who is also a business mogul added in his vociferation that Ghanaians “have been brought to the brink by despicably dishonest, corrupt, reckless, arrogant, and divisive leadership. We are also victims of bad fiscal and monetary policies. We owe our relative peace and stability to the resilience and patience of Ghanaians, and I pray that we remain so. I know what suffering is like, and that is why I will continue to share my thoughts on our development challenges.”
He, meanwhile, asked the Bank of Ghana not to jubilate over the fall in inflation prices since they were expected, and haven’t impacted prices on the market.
“It was interesting to hear Bank of Ghana (BOG) officials pat themselves on the back because yearon-year inflation had dropped to 26.4% in November 2023, from 35.2% in October 2023 and 54.1% in December 2022. This trend should have been expected, I thought, because of the massive price increases and exchange rate depreciation that were recorded during the corresponding periods in 2022.
“It is a fallacy of year-on-year inflation numbers – they tend to be influenced a lot by what happened one year ago. That is why year-on-year inflation may rise in a particular month even when the general price level has fallen in that month, and vice versa,” he indicated.
According to the business mogul, “you cannot describe what happened to prices and exchange rates towards the end 2022 as “a blip” when the effects are still with us. The markets simply adjusted to the rot in the system. A return to the relatively lower inflation rates of the past does not mean prices have become lower. Year-onyear inflation rate of 26.4% in November 2023 is not worthy of celebration.”
With government always blaming the economic woes on the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Togbe indicated that “Zambia and Kenya, exposed to the same global shocks, recorded 12.9% and 6.8%, respectively. And the US dollar is currently trading at more than 150% of its price (cedis) in June 2022.”
He, however, noted that the Bank of Ghana’s decision not to set the policy rate above year-on-year Consumer Price Index is the right way to go, despite the policy probably being influenced by the astronomical increase in the inflationary rates that might have crippled the central bank.
“But I am glad that Bank of Ghana (BOG) has finally bitten the bullet, accepting that it does not have to set its policy rate above “past inflation”. After decades of insisting that its policy rate must be fixed above year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) to ensure “positive real returns” to investors, BOG had over the past several months, following the collapse of our economy, kept their policy rate below the year-on-year changes in the CPI. Maybe it was the case that they just could not set the policy rate above the recent hyperinflation rates,” he said in portions of his statement titled, “Bank of Ghana Has Failed Us”.
The article can be read in full here.
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