Former Finance Minister Kwabena Duffuor has dismissed claims by the current Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, that Ghana’s economy has turned the corner.
Ofori-Atta made the claim during his presentation of the Mid-Year Budget Review in Parliament on July 31. He said that government plans and programmes had started yielding positive results and that the economy was on the path to recovery.
However, Dr Duffuor speaking on the Point of View on Citi TV disagreed with this assessment. He pointed to the contractions in the various sectors of the economy to indicate that the economy was nowhere near the path of recovery.
“What corner? In the first quarter of this year, if you look at the economic growth that the BoG statistics have released, we experienced a lot of contractions in very important sectors. We have experienced contractions in the construction sector, mining and quarry, wholesale-retail trading, water, sewerage and waste management.
“These are very important sectors that have contracted, so if you say you have turned the corner, what did you find in turning the corner?”.
He also suggested that e-levy be scrapped if the government is not getting enough revenue from it.
“Are we getting enough from it? If we are not getting enough from it, then it’s nuisance tax, you should scrap it”.
In a related story, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, has asserted that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) holds the strongest performance record among Ghana’s political parties since the country’s independence in 1957.
Mr. Duffuor argued that the NDC’s record outweighs that of Kwame Nkrumah who focused largely on manufacturing.
“Between 2009 and 2012, our performance has been the best since independence. No government has achieved what we achieved between 2009 and 2012. For forty years, the interest rates had come down, the Treasury Bills (TB) rates came below 10 percent, the Cedi over four years moved by 60 pesewas and our GDP was 14.5 in 2011.” Read more …>>>
Also Trending >>> WE’RE NOT ON THE ROAD YET – KWAME PIANIM REACTS TO OFORI-ATTA’S CLAIM OF TURNING THE CORNER
