The Minister of Finance, Mohammed Amin Adam, has refuted claims by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) that Ghana’s economy under the erstwhile John Dramani Mahama administration outperformed the New Patriotic Party (NPP) under President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

According to the minister, despite the harsh impact of COVID-19 and the Russia/Ukraine war on the Ghanaian economy, the economy is on a quick recovery. The minister added that the growth recorded so far is better than what was experienced under the NDC.

“Ghana’s economy is showing strong signs of recovery, registering healthy growth in the first quarter of 2024.

“Now our colleagues [NDC] say we are not doing well, we are not managing the economy well, but they were doing better, isn’t it? Now let’s look at the figures despite the difficulties of COVID-19 and the Russia/Ukraine war.

“This year we are growing at 3.1%, we may even grow more than 3.1% because at the time we projected to grow at 3.1% we didn’t have the GHC8.2 billion SME programme and we had not implemented phase 2 of Planting for Food and Jobs,” Amin Adam said in a report on asaaseradio.com.

The minister stated that the NPP government has a better record when it comes to fiscal balance and a performing economy. He questioned the basis for the NDC’s claim that its government performed better.

“Let’s come to fiscal balance, they recorded a deficit of 7.1% in 2015, and in 2016 [they recorded] a deficit of 6.3%. How much deficit did we record last year? 3.3%. An economy that is non-performing, the one that was doing well recorded 6.8%, so I don’t know what it means when they say that they did better, and we are doing poorly,” he said in a report on asaaseradio.com.

EAN/NOQ