NPP’s worst is better than NDC’s best – Bawumia jabs

Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has taken a dig at the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) over the management of the Ghana cedi.

According to him, in as much as the cedi has experienced some depreciation under the New Patriotic Party(NPP) government, the ruling party’s performance in terms of management of the cedi is far better than that of the NDC.

Dr. Bawumia in his presentation at the TownHall Meeting held in Accra with the Economic Management Team (EMT) of Government on Wednesday, stated categorically that NPP’s worst performance in terms of the management of the depreciation of the cedi is far more better than the best of the NDC.

“The data on the annual rate of depreciation of the cedi in recent years shows that the worst performance so far under the NPP’s government, the 8.4 percent depreciation that we saw in 2018, that worst performance is better than the best performance under the previous government between 2012 and 2016.”

Making a comparison between the erstwhile John Mahama’s administration and the President Akufo-Addo’s government, he recounted that in 2014, the exchange rate depreciated by 31.3 percent, fiscal deficit was 10.1 percent of GDP, public debt rose 70.2 percent of GDP, inflation rose to 17percent and GDP growth had declined from 7.3 percent to 4 percent.

He added that “in other words, the economic fundamentals had weakened significantly, and therefore the depreciation was easily explainable. It was not caused by dwarfs or high-rise building. The exchange rate in 2014 had exposed the weak economic fundamentals.”

All the fundamentals including current account compared, he said “you will see we were in a much weaker position in 2014 compared to 2018.”

According to the Vice President, at the end of December 2017, the cedi had cumulatively depreciated by 4.9 percent compared to 9.6 percent in 2016 and this was the cedi’s best performance since 2011.”

The start of 2019 has been characterized by another sudden sharp depreciation of the cedi which has been revised.

The cedi however depreciated by 8.4 percent in 2018 largely on account of the emerging market pressures and US interest rate increases.

“So our worst is better than your best and then you say boot-for-boot. This one is more like boot-for-chale wote,” he said, to a cheering crowd.