The Member of Parliament for Tano North, Dr Gideon Boako, a spokesperson for former Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, attempted to score some points during the vetting of Minister of Finance-designate Dr Cassiel Ato Forson on Monday, January 13, 2025.

Dr Boako tried to make Dr Ato Forson apologise to Dr Bawumia for allegedly misleading the public during a public lecture he held to challenge some figures on the economy which the former vice president put out.

“In your presentation, you put out some data, among which I found highly misleading information that you presented. And to quote you verbatim, you said, ‘Mr Chairman, the official data from the Ministry of Finance indicates clearly that the overall deficit by the end of 2016 was 7.8% of GDP (6.1% of new rebased GDP).’ But the figure you quoted, Honourable Nominee, was utterly untrue.

“And to back this with evidence, if you read the budget statements of 2017, the mid-year budget statement of 2018, and the mid-year budget statement of 2019, you will see that page 7, paragraph 14, of the 2017 mid-year budget puts that figure at 9.3% of GDP and not what you quoted. Again, page 12, paragraph 45, of the 2018 mid-year budget puts the figure at 9.3%, not what you quoted. Lastly, page 3, paragraph 14, of the 2019 full budget statement posts the figure at 9.3%, not what you quoted,” he said.

He added, “Where did you get that figure you quoted from? Would you consider apologising to the former Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia?”

But Dr Boako was stopped in his tracks by the chairman of the Appointment Committee, Bernard Ahiafor, who told the Tano North MP, “It doesn't lie in your mouth to ask the nominee to consider apologising.”

Bernard Ahiafor ordered Dr Boako to retract his demand for an apology, which he complied with.

The Tano North legislator then attempted again to raise questions about Dr Ato Forson’s integrity but failed once more.

“You know the enviable office of the finance minister that you are potentially going to occupy should come with utmost integrity, honesty backed by meticulousness, profundity, and analytical precision. In your capacity as Minority Spokesperson, you misled the public with inaccurate public data.

“Can you assure this committee that you are not going to sleep on the job and make some of these data presentation errors that we have experienced in the past, for which Ghana was charged for some misreporting by the IMF? That’s my question,” Dr Boako said.

The chairman of the committee again asked Dr Boako to expunge his commentary about Dr Forson’s integrity because they were against the roles of the House.

The finance minister-designate, in his response, said he never misled the public.

He pointed out that all the figures he used were either from the Ministry of Finance or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The finance minister-designate went on to quote figures from an IMF document and the Ministry of Finance to prove that the figures he gave during his lecture were accurate.

“And the Honourable Gideon Boako has got it very wrong. Very wrong in the sense that he's not privy to the IMF data. And I want to refer him to the IMF staff reports for 2018 and 2019. If you can check now, I want to take him through it. Mr Chairman, he's wrong. In fact, the very 7.8% fiscal deficit for 2016 was reported by the IMF. Mr Chairman, the IMF has subsequently even revised the fiscal deficit for 2016 down on a cash basis to 6.3%.

“Mr Chairman, you know me in this House; I don't just speak. I speak with data. I research before I speak. I use data from independent sources. Ghana was in an IMF programme at the time. In 2017, the Ministry of Finance presented a budget. They quoted the numbers he's making reference to. I challenged those numbers. In fact, my former boss also challenged the numbers because I was a deputy minister at the time. In 2018, they repeated the same inaccurate numbers, and it had become the order of the day," he said.

He added, “I had the responsibility to defend our legacy. And in defending the legacy, I decided to use data from independent sources—the International Monetary Fund. In doing so, the IMF presented this data. Mr Chairman, I'll give you this. This is a dashboard I asked the Ministry of Finance to tabulate for me. This is from the Ministry of Finance's own records. According to the Ministry of Finance, the fiscal deficit on a cash basis for 2016 was 6.3% of GDP. Mr Chairman, this is not coming from me. So the 7.8%—I was extremely charitable.”

BAI/EK

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