Running mate for the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has sought to exonerate his party from accusations by President John Mahama that they accumulated 41 percent of the nation’s external debt.
President Mahama said the NPP’s borrowing eventually created GHc14 billion of Ghana’s total external debt stock.
Responding to the President, Dr Bawumia said Ghana was declared a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) at the time the NPP was in government, which meant his party instead reduced the debt stock from $6.1 billion to $3.8 billion from 2001 to 2008.
[contextly_sidebar id=”jN8SImRjZDgGowoskZSjIEs5gcG3ZbVE”]The president made the comment in response to Dr. Bawumia who blamed Ghana’s ailing economy on government’s “reckless borrowing.”
“… Every amount that we spend in this country for school feeding and all the other programmes, where does it come from? The money does not come from John Mahama’s pocket. It comes from the revenue that we raise and so if we raised the most revenue in the history of Ghana, I thought he should be patting me on the shoulder and not raising it as a sin of my government… if you take our external debts, it amounts to 14 billion dollars and if you disaggregate the debts and apportion it by the different government, 41 percent of that debt was borrowed by the NPP administration,” he added.
“It can be seen that as a result of the HIPC initiative and prudent borrowing, Ghana’s external debt stock actually declined from $6.1 billion in 2000 to $3.8 billion by 2008 (the first time in history). The debt has since increased by $10.2 to $14 billion in 2015. So how is what the President said in Ho possible? The facts therefore show that 72% of Ghana’s external debt stock and 90% of Ghana’s total debt stock was accumulated during the last seven years,” Dr. Bawumia stressed.
He also used the table below to buttress his argument.
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana