Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has stated that choosing the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government is a choice for competent economic knowledge while choosing a National Democratic Congress (NDC) government is a choice for incompetence.
According to him, despite the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic weighed heavily on the economic management of the Akufo-Addo administration, the government has remarkably managed the debt level.
The NDC, he said, mismanaged the debt level towards the 2016 elections and was compelled to run to the World Bank for a bailout.
Addressing the Tertiary Students Confederacy (TESCON) of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), the student wing of the NPP at an engagement on Saturday, the Vice President took time to explain debt management, competent economic management and debt management and their impact on the economic indicators.
According to him, the NDC has consistently gone to town shouting the debt level has ballooned without a clue of what that will mean if it is put against the economic indicators.
Dr. Bawumia admitted that indeed the debt level may have gone up but economic management has not gone down because the government has maintained prudent debt levels, which has other economic indicators stable.
He noted that if the debt level is not prudently managed it will affect the exchange rate, the interest rate, the inflation rate and economic growth among other salient indicators.
He said, “Isn’t that the case? You are managing the economy in a way to look at its impact on these variables.”
“When the NDC was in government, they took us to HIPC. You remember the HIPC theory? They had mismanaged the debt level such that we had very high inflation, very high exchange rate depreciation, very high-interest rate and low growth.”
“That was the legacy they left us and by the time we were going towards 2016, the debt level has increased to a state where inflation was going up, the interest rate was going up, exchange rate depreciation going up and growth coming down,” he added.
The NDC government, he said, had to run to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout.
Dr. Bawumia argued it is a different scenario under the Akufo-Addo-led NPP government and stressed that though the debt levels have gone, it has not destabilized the inflation rate and the other indicators.
He said, “Our debt levels have gone up but what has happened to inflation? It has come down. What has happened to exchange rates, it has depreciated. What has happened to interest rates? What has happened to growth, it is going up.”
“That is the difference in economic management. There is one that is incompetent and there is one that is competent.”
“If you choose the NDC you go to the incompetent path and if you choose the NPP you have competent economic management.”
“They did not have COVID but could not manage the debt; we have COVID but we’ve been able to manage it,” he added.
Source: MyPublisher24.com