Another 3% increase in Ghana’s debt stock has triggered concerns among economists and some members of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the UK.
Ghana’s public debt stock increased by about GHS2.1 billion from June to August 2014, rising from GHS63.6 billion to 65.7 billion cedis.
Speaking after the Annual NPP fundraising dinner held in London, a member of the Communication team Da Costa Aboagye said: “The trend of borrowing is worrying thus to preserve the future generation from paying huge debt, we must not let the Mahama- led government load us with perpetual debt.”
He said the principle of “spending money to be paid by the future generations under the name of funding is but swindling the future generation. The scale of government borrowing has been overwhelming in recent times. The NDC inherited a public debt stock of GHS9.5 billion in 2009 from the NPP.”
[contextly_sidebar id=”H2IZN9q4w5jW611YMxc7OMAPWGNgF6ye”]The ratio of the debt to GDP rose to 57.3% at the end of August from an initial 55.4% at the end of June.
The debt stock level increased by almost GHS13.8 billion in the first eight months of the year representing a 26.5% increase.
“The question is why is our debt too high? – Ghana’s debt is too high because of government incompetence; government borrows too much, spends too much, mismanages too much, loses too much via corrupt practices and has left us with too much national debt,” he lamented
“It is an anxious time. Prices and bills keep going up – petrol, electricity, food and water and you wonder how the next generation is going to manage,” he added.
The Finance Minister Seth Terkper will present the 2015 Budget to Ghana’s Parliament on Wednesday and is expected to explain how it will finance the budget to bring the economy back on track.
Government’s struggle to deal with the economic challenges forced it to initiate discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a possible bailout programme.
The decline in gold prices, challenges in the implementation of some the revenue measures announced in the 2014 budget, depreciation of the Cedi among others, almost crippled the economy.
But according to Da Costa Aboagye, “today, the clearest sign of government irresponsibility is the enormous size of Ghana’s debt. The Leeds research fellow advised the President that although a father cannot alienate the labour of his son, the aggregate body of fathers may alienate the labour of all their sons, of their posterity, in the aggregate, and oblige them to pay for all the enterprises, just or unjust, profitable or ruinous, into which our vices, our passions or our personal interests may lead us,” he said.
“We should all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle the future generations with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves,” he insisted.
Mr Aboagye emphasised that the problems Ghana is facing is “huge” and “urgent” and appealed to Ghanaians to vote for the NPP come 2016 to rebuild the “broken economy, instil responsibility in the management of the national purse, reform public services and build a responsible society because unless we do something, our children will be saddled with continuous debt being accumulated by the Mahama- led NDC government for decades to come.”
By: citifmonline.com/Ghana