Peter Akwesi Mensah, a member of the NDC's communication team, has blasted President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta for making life difficult for the average Ghanaian.

According to him, the Akufo Addo-led administration is reckless and has caused the people of Ghana enormous pain.

Speaking in an interview with TV XYZ on Tuesday, February 7, 2023, he argued that for the first time in the history of Africa, weird happenings are being experienced in the wake of the government factoring individual bondholders in its domestic debt exchange programme.

He claimed that Ghana becomes the first country in the history of Africa to include individual bondholders in a domestic debt exchange programme.

“It is a shame on the party, they have demonstrated that the Fiscal Responsibility Act, is not actually a Fiscal Responsibility Act but rather it is a recklessness responsibility act. I am telling you. They’ve demonstrated a high level of recklessness and that’s Akufo Addo… do you know that the whole of Africa, this is the first time a government is seeking an IMF bailout and is including individual bondholders in a domestic debt exchange programme?
“This is the first time in the history of African politics. So, I’m saying, Akufo Addo, Bawumia and Ken Ofori Atta need to be named in the Guinness Book of Records. They’ve set an unbreakable economic record in Africa's history,” he said.

Meanwhile, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is optimistic that Ghana will conclude talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a possible financial bailout programme.

According to President Akufo-Addo, though government's debt exchange programme was fraught with several challenges after its announcement, it has largely been accepted by the citizenry.

He made this known when the German Federal Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, paid him a visit at the Jubilee House.

“We have already taken one important step forward in concluding a staff-level agreement with the IMF. One of the steps was the domestic debt exchange programme which encountered a lot of difficulties, but it has now been virtually concluded...We are now looking towards going the full hog and concluding the agreement. We're hoping that will be done by the middle of March,” President Akufo-Addo said.

He also called on Germany to encourage China, an ad hoc member of the Paris Club to support Ghana’s debt restructuring efforts.



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AM/SARA