The former President John Dramani Mahama has said, all monies borrowed by governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) have gone into consumption rather than providing the infrastructure needed by the people.
The former President who was on a ‘THANK YOU TOUR’ to appreciate the people of the Upper East Region for their wonderful support during the 2020 general election made the pronouncement in the studios of Ura radio Bolgatanga monitored by Apexnewsgh.com during his morning section interview.
“Even in our traditional homes, you borrow money for something productive, something tangible, you borrow money to build a house or to re-roof your house or to buy a bicycle to be able to ride to the farm. Mostly something that gives a return on investment. If is a school building, children are able to learn, you will get more educated people that will be a good human resource for the country”.
“If it is health care, you keep your citizen healthy and they are able to back to work. If is a road, they can facilitate the movement of passengers and goods across the length and breadth of your country. If it is Airport, you are able to facilitate international and local travel. I mean there are so many things you borrow to put in place that enhances the productivity of your country and enhances the growth of your economy”.
“So, in our time, you could look at our borrowing profile and see that it was going into infrastructure to provide more roads, more hospitals, more schools, to expand our ports, and so on and so forth. And then, also going to do what we call ‘taking off high-interest debt’ is a debt we inherited. So, if you borrowed at an interest rate that is lower, then we use it to retire some of the high-interest debt that has accumulated especially the local debt because that mostly had the highest interest rate. So, that is what a lot of the borrowing went into”.
Mr. Mahama said, even though his NDC government was criticized by his successors for over-borrowing, he boasted that his borrowing was used for a tangible and productive project than going into consumption.
“But we were criticized by our successors as over-borrowing, but like you are saying, a lot of what we borrowed for was tangible for people to be able to see”.
“Several years later, you have witnessed what has happened from a Ghc 120 billion cedis to almost Ghc 400 billion public debt. And what most Ghanaians are asking is that, what have they done with this monies? And looks like most, it has gone into consumption rather than providing the infrastructure that we need. It was only an afterthought that suddenly they realized that we must be doing some infrastructure. So, agenda 111 has been conjured. There is no transparency on how the money is going to be procured and all that”. He said
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