
The Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo says Ghana must be rescued from the inept managers of the economy who are finding every means to hide the economic malaise of the country.
Contributing to a discussion on the floor of parliament on Ghana’s exit of the IMF programme on Thursday, the Bolga Central lawmaker told the House,”the truth of the matter is we are worse than we entered IMF and that is a fact.”
He added” Mr Speaker the rhetorics, the propaganda, all the high sounding words are hiding a very precarious economic condition of our economy”
According to him, the financial indiscipline on the part of the Akufo-Addo administration is worrying as total wage bill has ballooned from GHS14 billion to GHS22 billion.
He told parliament that if the government does not halt the indiscipline, the GHS22 billion wage bill would be doubled by the year 2020.
Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta last week in parliament explained Ghana’s successful completion of the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) programme, or bailout, of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Ken Ofori-Atta explained why Ghana applied for it, how it failed under the Mahama Administration, how the Nana Akufo-Addo Administration put it back on track, and how it has now been completed with excellence.
“I am glad to announce that it [the ECF ] is now a mission accomplished!” Ken Ofori-Atta, Minister for Finance told parliamentarians on March 28.
But Isaac Adongo has said government’s celebration of the exit of the bailout programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is embarrassing because it left on a hopeless grounds.
“Mr Speaker I’ll like to start off by looking at what has been described as fiscal discipline and to paint the picture of our rising list in terms of our fiscal environment. Mr. Speaker in the IMF’s own statement, and here I want to indicate that what IMF gave was not for Ghana to exit but the IMF gave us a condition to waive us meeting the conditions that we were supposed to meet in other criteria. In other words Ghana entered a classroom to write an exam. We were supposed to write exams in three years, in three years time we said we were not ready. We were given another one year to come and write exams, we still said we were not ready. Then we wrote to the IMF to say that we want you to give us a waiver for non-observance of performance criteria and the IMF said go and sin nomore.
“…Mr. Speaker you have failed an exams, you have been asked to live your life because you can’t pass it and today you’re here praising yourself.”