The government is on course to restore the country’s economic stability and growth that existed before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The government’s post COVID-19 pandemic programme for economic stability and growth is a solid blueprint that is ushering the country out of the setback Ghanaians have had to endure the last 12months.
Addressing a press conference in Accra on Wednesday, Richard Ahiagbah, the Director of Communications for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), who gave the assurance, outlined the recovery plans of the Akufo-Addo-led administration with available data which showed the NPP turned around the contracting economy it inherited from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in 2017 to date.
He condemned a deliberate effort on the part of the NDC to mislead many Ghanaians to think that the government had mismanaged the economy since assuming office and the claim by the NDC however was not supported by the hard economic data and the reality around the world.
“In all these, the NDC has not provided any credible alternative solution but talking a lot about blame, mischaracterisation, and denial of obvious global economic realities but have forgotten their poor performance when they were in office between 2013 and 2016, and supervised a perpetual decline of the economy which is measured in terms of Gross Domestic Product.
“In 2013, Gross Domestic Product was 7.3 per cent, in 2014 it was four per cent, in 2015 it was 3.9 per cent and in 2016 it was 3.7 per cent and in terms of percentage changes, the economy deteriorated by 45.2 per cent in 2014 compared to 2013 growth, similarly, the economy decreased by 2.5 per cent in 2015 and 5.12 per cent in 2016.
“In the Agriculture, Industry, and Service sectors, the NDC’s performance was even worst because from 2013, growth plummeted significantly across all sectors, in 2014 all the sectors grew at a negative rate using 2013 performance as a base,” Mr Ahiagbah bemoaned.
He reminded the citizenry of the poor performance against the NDC inheriting an economy that had discovered oil in commercial quantities and began production in 2010; which shot the country’s Gross Domestic Product to 14 per cent in 2011 which led to growth momentum vanquished by the NDC.
Comparing the NDC’s performance with the NPP’s time in office before the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mr Ahiagbah identified several thematic areas that the government was paying attention to, to tackle the prevailing challenges which included raft of fiscal, monetary measures to rein in expenditures, improve revenue mobilisation, cut in discretionary spending, cut in salaries of executives and freeze on foreign travel, among others.
He explained that the government’s desire to continue fiscal consolidation efforts and reduce fiscal deficit in line with the pending International Monetary Fund (IMF) Programme was expected to record one of the lowest deficits this year.
