Adongo Fires At Ofori-Atta Over Claims That Economy Is Turning Around

The Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central, Isaac Adongo has fired verbal salvos at the Finance Minister, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta over claims by the later that Ghana’s economy is witnessing a turn-around.

Critiquing the mid-year budget review presented by the minister during a prress conference by the minority, Mr Adongo expressed deep concerns over the country’s worsening economic situation with increasing inflation and lending rates.

He highlighted Ghana’s alarming economic indicators and questioned the Finance Minister’s claim of having ‘turned the corner’ in the country’s financial crisis.

Drawing attention to the Finance Minister’s claim of having ‘turned the corner,’ Adongo firmly contested the notion, citing disturbing figures, “You have turned the corner when inflation is 42%. Is that a corner?” he questioned.

“You have turned the corner when you are reporting that even by the end of the year your reserves will only be 0.8 months, less than one month of reserves at the Bank of Ghana.

The Bolgatanga Central lawmaker who is now the Ranking Member on the Finance Committee expressed surprise the NPP majority members who slept throughout the presentation suddenly woke to applaud the Minister.

“I was surprised when they suddenly woke up and started shouting ‘yea yea’ when they hadn’t heard the man speaking. They were sleeping,” he said.

Mr Adongo also slammed the recent decision by the governor and the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to increase the monetary policy rate to 30%, suggesting that such measures indicated the severity of the economic challenges.

The most striking revelation by Adongo was the state of the Bank of Ghana’s reserves. “Your central bank, the Bank of Ghana, has actually recorded negative reserves to the tune of 70 billion Ghana cities,” he revealed, highlighting a deep financial crisis within the institution.

He stressed the extent of the financial problem, saying, “If you take away government debt that they have impaired of 48 billion, you will see that the Bank of Ghana has a hole of 22 billion.”

Adongo strongly refuted the government’s claims of having ‘turned the corner’ and argued that the Bank of Ghana’s current financial status rendered it unfit for conducting monetary policy without resorting to printing money.