According to assertions made by John Kumah, Deputy Minister of Finance, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government borrowed more money than any other administration in Ghana’s history.
The Akufo-Addo government was borrowing at acceptable levels until Covid-19 struck and destroyed the successes and returns of those borrowing, making it difficult to now see the benefits, according to him. He claimed that current statistics and global events do not add up to make the government worse when it comes to borrowing.
Mr. Kumah said the following to Umaru Sanda Amadu on Citi TV’s Face to Face:“People may come to the conclusion that we have over-borrowed because of what happened. We borrowed GH¢3 billion from 2017 to 2019 for investments in building the economy, and we were making 7 percent on returns.
If it were not Covid-19 which crashed productivity to zero, we will not be where we are because there will be returns to service the debt. But if you did investments and it gets crashed by Covid-19 and circumstances beyond you, it will now appear that you over-borrowed, but during the time that you were borrowing, you never anticipated these disastrous consequences.”
Mr. Kumah elaborated on his defense by saying that “no other government has debt records higher than ours. If you recall, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) took office in 2009 with a debt level of GH9 billion and $8 billion in dollar equivalent at the time. By the time they handed power over to us in 2017, however, the debt level had increased to GH123 billion, which is equivalent to a 1360 percent increase in terms of increment and percentage and approximately $29 billion in dollars.
He continued, saying;“our current debt level is about GH¢464 billion as of today and in terms of percentage, it is just about 300 percent so if someone grew it by 1360 percent and you have increased it by 300 percent, I don’t see where people will say we have over-borrowed in the history of Ghana.”
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) cannot be removed of responsibility for the country’s entire debt problem, he continued, because “their borrowing is also part of our current debt because it is a continuous debt profile and secondly, they never got hit by any global pandemic like Covid-19 or the Russia-Ukraine war that we are in.”
