The Executive Director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) Professor Newman Kusi, has called on government to reveal the exact debt stock of Ghana.
President John Mahama in a recent interview dismissed allegations that his government has borrowed to the tune of $37 billion.
The running mate to Nana Akufo-Addo, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has on several occasions accused the Mahama administration of borrowing $37 billion but has only accounted for $7 billion of that.
Reacting to the allegation, Mr. Mahama said the figures were exaggerated.
“There is a lot of exaggeration about borrowing. The borrowing has not been excessive. I heard one of the candidates say during this government, we have borrowed $37 billion...the total debt of Ghana, as it stands today from independence, is $24 billion.
But speaking on the Morning Starr Wednesday, Prof. Kusi told host Nii Arday Clegg that it is amazing that government cannot provide a credible data on the country’s debt stock.
“It is amazing that we cannot get a single data or information on the stock of public debt because between the Bank of Ghana and the Ministry of Finance, they should be able to give us the public debt stock at any point in time.
“The debt level has gotten to a point where it is becoming embarrassing to the country and the fiscal and the monitoring authorities. The public debt as at end of 2012 was 35.1 billion cedis by June 2015 it had risen to 92.2 billion cedis...so an increase of 56 billion in a matter of three years and when you talk about it the answer you get is that we borrowed to retire short term maturing debts...if we are borrowing to amortise maturing debts then why has the debt stock increased so astronomically that the government and the responsible authorities find it difficult to tell the nation the level of the debt stock.
“It’s not that they don’t know...the ministry of finance cannot convince Ghanaians that they don’t know or they don’t have the figures, the bank of Ghana cannot tell Ghanaians that they don’t know...why has the Bank of Ghana stopped publishing the debt figures in their monetary policy releases...the issue has more to do with non-availability of information than confinement of information,” Professor Kusi said.
Prof. Kusi added that he doubts the credibility of the figures being bandied by the two main political parties – NDC and the NPPP – adding that government has the responsibility of telling Ghanaians the actual figure and what the monies borrowed were used for.
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