Speaker Alban Bagbin has set up an eight-member bipartisan committee to investigate conflict of interest allegations levelled against Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta by the minority caucus. The ad hoc committee has the minority caucus’ Bolgatanga East MP Dominic Ayine and the majority caucus’ Adansi-Asokwa MP K.T. Hammond, as co-chairs. Mr Bagbin put the committee together on Thursday, 10 November 2022 when the minority caucus moved a motion of censure against Mr Ofori-Atta for mismanaging the Ghanaian economy. The other committee members include Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings and Bernard Ahiafor (from the minority caucus) and Patrick Yaw Boamah, Kwame Anyimadu-Antwi and Andrew Agyapa Mercer (from the majority caucau. The committee has seven working days to finish its work and submit a report. “The evidence will be placed before the committee”, Mr Bagbin told the house, adding: “The minister will have the opportunity to defend himself”. “A report will be presented to the house and we will debate that report,” Mr Bagbin noted. In the view of the minority caucus, Mr Ofori-Atta has run the economy down and cannot be trusted to superintend his own mess. The majority caucus, led by Deputy Majority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin, however, argued that the law of natural justice provides that the minister is given an opportunity to defend himself against the allegations of reckless borrowing, conflict of interest and gross mismanagement that have led to the unbridled depreciation of the cedi, soaring prices of fuel and foodstuffs, among others. In his recent national address on the economy, President Nana Akufo-Addo said ongoing talk with the IMF for a $3-billion extended credit facility would be concluded by the end of 2022. He admitted the economy was in a crisis but said his government was doing all it could to fiz things. Read the president’s full address below: ADDRESS TO THE NATION BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC, NANA ADDO DANKWA AKUFO-ADDO, ON THE ECONOMY, ON SUNDAY, 30TH OCTOBER 2022. Fellow Ghanaians, good evening. Back in 2020, at the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, I started a regular conversation with you that came to be popularly known as Fellow Ghanaians. It was a time of great fear of the unknown, and the entire world felt at risk. I came into your homes regularly to tell you what the experts were discovering about the virus, and what we should do. Now that we have seen the worst of the COVID-19, I can tell you that there were moments during those times when I was distraught, there were moments when I was in despair about the apparent inadequacy of our health facilities, and there were moments when I wondered if the dire predictions made about dead bodies on our streets would truly happen. But I knew that I owed it to all of us that, as your president, I had to hold my nerve, show leadership and take us out of the crisis. With your help and support, and the great mercies of the Almighty, we can say that we emerged from the ravages of the pandemic with one of the lowest mortality rates globally. In fact, Ghana’s handling of the pandemic won universal acclaim. We could all see in real time the devastation that was being wreaked on economies during the pandemic, but I doubt that anyone imagined the extent of the damage. Our economy, here in Ghana, like many, many others around the globe, was thrown into turmoil. When I said, at the height of the COVID pandemic, that we knew what to do to bring the economy back to life, but not how to bring people back to life, it was not said in jest. We had done it before, and we were on course to doing it again. Ghana’s economy grew by a remarkable 5.4% in 2021, signifying a strong recovery from the 0.5% growth recorded the previous year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, in the last quarter of 2021, our economy grew at seven percent (7%), only for the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the first quarter of this year to aggravate the effects of COVID-19, and plunge the global economy into even greater turmoil from which it has not yet recovered. The whole world has been taken aback by the speed with which inflation has eaten away people’s incomes. Economies, big and small, have experienced, over this year alone, the highest rise in cost of living over a generation; the highest rise in government borrowing in over fifty (50) years; the highest rise in inflation for forty (40) years; the steepest depreciation in their currencies to the US dollar over the last thirty (30) years; the fastest peak in interest rates for over twenty (20) years; and the greatest threat of unemployment in peace time; with over a hundred million people being pushed into extreme poverty. Between the end of 2019 and now, inflation in Ghana has increased by five-fold, in Togo by sixteen-fold, by eleven-fold in Senegal, and by seven-fold in Cote d’Ivoire. In truth, however, the fact that there are petrol queues in France does not make it more tolerable that the trotro price from Kasoa to Circle has doubled in the past one year, nor does it make it any more tolerable that the price of cooking oil goes up every other week. It is important to state that mentioning the increases in prices worldwide is not meant to belittle the scope of suffering here, but simply to help us put things into some perspective, and, hopefully, learn some useful lessons about how other people are coping. Fellow Ghanaians, this is why I am back in your homes this evening to ask for your support, as we work together to get our economy back into good shape. In April, after the Cabinet retreat of the first quarter, and recognising the deteriorating macro economy, my government announced a thirty percent (30%) cut in budgeted discretionary expenditures, and a thirty percent (30%) cut in salaries of the President,
