Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central and Ranking Member of the Finance Committee, Isaac Adongo, in a fiery critique of the mid-year budget review, expressed deep concerns over Ghana’s worsening economic situation.
He highlighted Ghana’s alarming economic indicators and questioned the Finance Minister’s claim of having ‘turned the corner’ in the country’s financial crisis.
Drawing attention to the Finance Minister’s claim of having ‘turned the corner,’ Adongo firmly contested the notion, citing disturbing figures.
He said, “You have turned the corner when inflation is 42%. Is that a corner?” he questioned.
“You have turned the corner when you are reporting that even by the end of the year your reserves will only be 0.8 months, less than one month of reserves at the Bank of Ghana.”
Addressing the media after the presentation of the 2023 mid-year budget review on Monday, July 31, the Bolgatanga Central MP expressed surprise the NPP majority members who slept throughout the presentation suddenly woke to applaud the Minister.
“I was surprised when they suddenly woke up and started shouting ‘yea yea’ when they hadn’t heard the man speaking. They were sleeping,” he said.
Adongo slammed the recent decision by the governor and the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to increase the monetary policy rate to 30%, suggesting that such measures indicated the severity of the economic challenges.
Adongo also expressed alarm over the depreciation of the cedi by 30%, stating, “So quite clearly, he is not even near the corner, let alone to turn it.”
The most striking revelation by Adongo was the state of the Bank of Ghana’s reserves. “Your central bank, the Bank of Ghana, has actually recorded negative reserves to the tune of 70 billion Ghana cities,” he revealed, highlighting a deep financial crisis within the institution.
He stressed the extent of the financial problem, saying, “If you take away government debt that they have impaired of 48 billion, you will see that the Bank of Ghana has a hole of 22 billion.”
Adongo strongly refuted the government’s claims of having ‘turned the corner’ and argued that the Bank of Ghana’s current financial status rendered it unfit for conducting monetary policy without resorting to printing money.