The former Finance Minister and a Tax Expert Mr. Seth E. Terkper has issued a statement to debunk what he claims to be the current government’s repetitive false assertions that its predecessor(erstwhile NDC government) left a weak economy at the end of it’s tenure in 2016.
His statement indicates that at all times the NPP government deliberately ignores the legacy of opportunities which was bequeath to it by the NDC government despite all the challenges the latter was faced with.
It saids, rather, government’s distortion of the 2016 data of the NDC as against it’s own performance data from 2017 to date is pointing to a worse legacy at the end of year 2020 and that government’s strenuous attempt to blame the huge fiscal deficit/gaps before the COVID-19 solely on the pandemic can’t hold water.
His article seeks to deflate claims by the current government as inheriting a bad economy and poor legacy at Januaru 2017 whilst restating that the NDC government put the present one in a better andadvantageous position to manage the economy better than the negative and worrisome indicators they are saddled with now.
Parts 1 and 2 of his article begins with the endowment of oil production and revenues while Part 3 makes the case that HEs Mills and Mahama did more with one (1) oil field than HE Nana Addo is doing with three (3) fields. The remaining parts repeats the revisions of data in detail, as portrayal of a frightening FY2021 ahead of the nation.
Mr. Terkper further asserts that the “recent downgrades by all the major rating agencies exposes frightening fiscal outcomes since 2017—long before the impact of COVID-19 in 2020. Ghana just posted its first negative growth in a quarter in nearly 40 years and, with the current pandemic and past crisis as background, there is increasing awareness of what it took for HE Mahama to keep the nation from the recessions that hit African and non-African countries from 2014 to 2016.”
He said, it’s obvious that the two (TEN and Sankofa) additional petroleum fields that started to generate revenues at the start of HE Nana Addo’s administration in 2017 is former President Mahama’s legacy and HE Nana Addo has become a full beneficiary of more oil revenues in three (3) years than the combined tenure of HE Mills/Mahama in six (6) years.
The former Finance Minister emphasized “that from the preliminary analysis above and the explanations given, it’s obvious that anybody’s claim of inheriting a poor economy from the perspective of oil revenues is false. The distortion is to keep the lid on the consequences of an ambitious “consumption-based” economic agenda that is no longer convincing, politically”
