Former President John Mahama claims that businesses flourished tremendously when National Democratic Congress (NDC) government was in charge of Ghana.
Delivering a lecture to open the NDC’s ideological school, the National Institute of Social Democracy, on Friday, John Mahama also said policies the NDC government put in place also pushed many lower class Ghanaians into the middle class.
[contextly_sidebar id=”TOFnw6kcAO1C0dZXZM20yLLGkLDHyfNG”]“Indeed, it’s in the time that our party has been in government that businesses have prospered the most,” he said.
The NDC launched the institute about a month ago with the aim of teaching members the party’s principles, ideologies, and values.
Speaking at the maiden lecture, John Mahama charged the leadership of the school to clear a widely held perception that the NDC’s social democracy ideology promotes poverty.
“We must redefine to the public mind and let them understand that social democracy does not amount to equalizing poverty… Our party has contributed the most to the increase in the middle class of this country.”
“In the period that the NDC has been in office, we have seen the greatest upward movement of people from lower classes into the middle class, and yet when people get into the middle class because of the perception that our party is social democratic and it’s against property owning and seeks to equalize poverty, then those same people that we have created the conditions to be upwardly mobile drift into the property owning classes and therefore identify themselves with a different ideology. And so that misconception must be erased,” he added.
Dumsor vs. ‘nuisance’ taxes
Although the former President was of the view that NDC helped the private sector, critics complained that erratic power cuts and some taxes considered to be “nuisance” affected private companies and industries.
A report by Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER) showed that Ghana lost at least 200 million cedis due to the impact of the power crisis.
It is thus unclear how the former President arrived at this conclusion.
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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin