Dr. Bawumia outlined these six reasons, while delivering a lecture on the topic “The Role of Financial Discipline and Investment In National Development” at a National Financial Literacy and Investment Summit organised by the University Students Association of Ghana (USAG) at the University for Development Studies, Wa Campus.
Dr. Bawumia pointed out that the NDC had increased Ghana’s debt in seven years by GHC90 billion, from GHC9.5 billion at the end of 2009 to some GHC99 billion currently; an equivalent of some 37 billion dollars at the time of borrowing.
“First, If you sum the cost of all the loan financed projects listed in the green book (even including those with artistic impressions, it is less than $7 billion. Meanwhile, the government has borrowed the equivalent of $37 billion so where is the rest of the money? Indeed, given the resources at its disposal one should expect at least four times the quantum of investment that the NDC claims to have undertaken”, Dr. Bawumia said, as he began listing the six reasons.
Dr. Bawumia proceeded to list a number of things the over 30billion dollars from borrowing the NDC cannot account for, could have done, which proves that contrary to the claims, the NDC has done a bad job at giving Ghanaians their due after undertaking unprecedented borrowing in the last seven years.
“The close to $30 billion of borrowing that was not used for projects could have inter alia:
Below are Dr Bawumia’s reasons why claims must be rejected
Developed the Rail network from Accra to Paga and transformed many parts of the country just by this investment.
Solved the water problems in Ghana
Solved the energy problem and not put the country through 4 years of dumsor at the cost of human lives and collapsing businesses and unemployment
Put in place at least 1000 kilometres of asphalted roads in each region. There will be no major road problem left in any region after this.
Transformed Agriculture in the Northern regions, Afram Plains and Ghana through investment in machinery, irrigation and dams.
Put in place one world class hospital in each region
Buy at least 1000 ambulances for the Ghana Ambulance service
Set up factories with the private sector across the country to add value to our raw materials and create jobs. On the issue of jobs, the question is, if the government has taken a whole 4 years to solve a basic problem like Dumsor, how long will it take to address unemployment? At this pace, many of the unemployed youths will be over the pension age before the NDC finds a solution to the unemployment problem.
Equip our existing health and education institutions with state of the art facilities.
Build an additional 600 of the Senior High Schools the government is currently trying to build”, he said.
Fact: Investment to GDP has declined and affected Economic Growth
The second reason, according to Dr Bawumia, is the fact that the data shows that contrary to all the claims of the NDC, infrastructure spending as a proportion of GDP has declined from an average of 11% between 2001 and 2008, when Ghana had no oil, to 5.7% between 2009
and 2015.
He explained that it was critical to measure investment by looking at its proportion to GDP because looking at just the nominal figures does not tell the full story.
“To explain this point, if a person tells you they have invested GHC1000 in the education of their children and another tells you they have invested GHC2000, you cannot conclude that the second person has invested more in his or her children if you do not compare it against the number of children in the family.
If the first person has one child and the second has 10 children, then the investment of the person with one child will be higher (i.e. GHC1000 per child compared to GHC200 per child for the second person).
“It is in this context that when we measure the impact of investment, we look at it relative to the GDP of a country. If as a country, your investment in infrastructure relative to GDP is declining, then your growth is likely to decline. This background is very important to understand what is happening in Ghana today”, he said
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