Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed opposition MP for Tamale Central has accused the Akufo-Addo led government of regularly cooking economic data to deceive intellectuals so that their analysis of the economy would be confusing.
Speaking on the analysis by a Senior Lecturer on Economics at the University of Ghana, Dr. Agyapoma Gyeke-Dako that the economic data does not support claims that the economy was mismanaged prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Murtala said on Class91.3FM’s breakfast show on Thursday, 24 March 2022: “I agree that the Debt-to-GDP in 2019 was not as it is but you would agree with me that it was growing in an accelerated fashion, so, clearly the signals were very clear”.
“If you read the World Bank Country Director’s verdict on this, he said the rate at which it was growing, even without COVID, we would have had this [economic crisis] because of the way the economy was abysmally managed”, Murtala Muhammed argued.
“So, clearly it was going to be a factor and I can understand that some of the figures you Dr. Gyeke-Dako deal with, as an intellectual, are based on figures available”, he observed but added: “I can tell you for a fact that a lot of the figures churned out by this government are cooked figures and they were exposed big time in the budget statement which was presented in parliament”.
“So, when they cook figures, you would do your analysis based on the figures available”, he insisted.
“I’ll give you a classical example: even currently, this government is telling us that the Debt-to-GDP is about 80.1 percent when we know it’s not true”.
“We know it’s not true because they haven’t added the GHS9.5 billion debt on ESLA. They haven’t also added the GHS2.4 billion GETfund bond. They haven’t added the GHS750 million Sinohydro debt and many others”, he claimed.
“So, what they have strategically done”, in his view, is to use the “cooked figures” to “deceive intellectuals” to do “misleading” analyses of the economy.
Apexnewsgh.com/Ghana/Ngamegbulam Chidozie Stephen
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