NPP made decent economic progress prior to COVID-19- Ahiagbah

THE New Patriotic Party (NPP) has said the party has managed the country’s economy better than the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The party said figures indicate that the opposition NDC led by John Dramani Mahama performed abysmally on the economy while in power.

Addressing a press conference in Accra, the Communications Director of NPP, Richard Ahiagbah said the opposition NDC is desperately trying to make the government unpopular with false claims and tags, but Ghanaians will not buy into their continuous propaganda.

Ahiagbah said the NDC had misled many Ghanaians to think that the NPP government had mismanaged the economy since assuming office in 2017.

“This claim by the NDC, however, is not supported by the hard economic data and the reality around the world,” he said.

Factors that impacted economy negatively

COVID-19, Russia-Ukraine war, soaring energy and food prices, higher interest rates, a strong dollar and a global slowdown negatively affected the economy.

NDC’s performance

Presenting figures to support his point, Ahiagbah said “on the performance of the larger economy which is measured in terms of GDP the NDC, supervised a perpetual decline from 2013 to 2016.

He said in 2013, GDP was 7.3%; 2014 it was 4%; 2015 it was 3.9% and in 2016 it was 3.7%.  In terms of percentage changes in the GPD, the economy deteriorated by 45.2% in 2014 compared to 2013 growth. Similarly, the economy decreased by 2.5% in 2015 and 5.12% in 2016

In the Real Sector, which includes Agriculture, Industry and Service, the NDC’s performance was even worst. From 2013, real sector growth plummeted significantly across all sectors. In 2014 all the sectors grew at negative rate using 2013 performance as base.

“Let me remind you that this poor performance was against the NDC inheriting an economy which had discovered oil in commercial quantities and began production in 2010; which shot Ghana’s GDP to 14% in 2011,” Ahiagbah added.

NPP’s performance

Highlighting the solid performance of the NPP under President Akufo-Addo, Ahiagbah said in 2017, the GDP grew at 8.1 percent compared to 3.7 percent in 2016.

In 2018, GDP grew by 6.3%, 2019 GDP grew by 6.5% and 2020 GDP grew by 0.5%.

He said, in the real sector, industry recorded its highest growth of 16.7% in 2017, Agriculture 8.4% and the Services sectors 4.3%

Ahiagbah added that industry grew from a mournful negative 0.5% in 2016 to 16.7 percent in 2017. Services grew from 2.8% in 2016 to an appreciable 4.3% in 2017. The Agric sector grew from a dismal 2.7% in 2016 to 8.4% in 2017.

He said in the midst of the impressive economic delivery of the NPP government, the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, thereby eroding growth momentum of the economy and gains due to a global recession brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic

The communications director of the NPP said despite setback occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic, the NPP government has outlined various interventions to help the country’s economy bounce back.

Interventions

He said government has introduced the Post Covid-19 Program for Economic Growth (PC-PEG) to among others establish a sustainable macro-fiscal path, restore debt sustainability and macro-economic stability underpinned by key structural reform and social protection.

According to him, the PC-PEG will address the economic challenges of this country through fiscal consolidation, det treatment and structural reform.

Ahiagbah explained that government through the Central Bank has responded with a raft of monetary policy measures, including the bi-weekly FX forward auction, and the BDC forex auction which has helped subdue the pressure on the spot FX market.

To complement the monetary policies which have been activated, he stated that the government has subsequently announced Expenditure-led measures including a 30% cut in discretionary expenditures, a moratorium on new creation of government units, a freeze on government travels, 30 percent cut in salaries of the executive and political appointees, among others.

The Communications Director mentioned the implementation of the Gold for Oil (G4O) Policy, implementation of the COVID-19 Alleviation and  Revitalization of Enterprises Support (CARES) Programme, to inject some Ghc100 billion into the economy and government’s transformative agenda to digitalize the economy.

This, he said would help formalize the Ghanaian economy & improve its administrative systems and global competitiveness.

He cited banking sector reforms with a tighter regulatory & supervisory framework. a key component here is the operationalization of the Ghana deposit protection scheme to insulate the national budget from costs arising from banking sector failure.

Ahiagbah said with these innovative measures, the government is demonstrating its resolve to build back the economy quicker and restore fiscal rectitude.

“Government’s commitment to these measures is a clear assurance that we are on the right track and capable of causing a turnaround of the economy with the resolute support of all Ghanaians,” he added.