…….Even $2 Billion by Close of Year Will Be Tough, Let Alone $8 Billion
Accra, (Lens) - President Kufuor recently told a group of Ghanaians in Beijing, China, that remittances sent home by Ghanaians will hit between 7 to 8 billion dollars by the close of this year (read).The November 6th edition of the Daily Graphic reported the president as saying that Ghanaians abroad have sent a colossal amount of $2 Billion by the first quarter of this year.
“These claims of President Kufuor are completely false. The President was clearly deceiving the Ghanaian community and the world at large,” says Fifi Kwetey, the National Propaganda Secretary of the NDC.
According to Mr Kwetey, who has worked as a Financial Analyst and a stockbroker for many years, reliable figures obtained from the World Bank and UN agencies, reveal that the total monies sent home by Sub Saharan Africans living in the diaspora as at the close of 2005 totaled only $7 billion. He explained that out of that amount, Nigeria alone accounted for almost 60 percent, i.e. 4.2 billion.
“How is it possible for remittances sent home by Ghanaians to hit $8 billion when the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa was netting only $7 billion as at the close of last year,” Mr Kwetey queried. According to Mr Kwetey, it is projected that the total remittances of Sub-Saharan diasporians would this year be in the region of $8 billion.He therefore wonders why President Kufuor is disgracing the country by making such blatantly false declarations. “Mounting political platforms in Ghana and peddling such untruths is one thing. But doing so abroad under the full glare of the international community certainly affects not just the image of the President but constitutes a disgrace to us all.” Mr Kwetey wondered how long it will take the Bank of Ghana to correct the obvious falsehoods being peddled by the President.
“Figures from the Central Bank, show that remittances have increased by about 800% between 1990 and 2003, going up from $209 million in 1990 to $1,017 billion in 2003,” Mr Kwetey stated.
If the president is to be believed, he said, then it means that between 2003 to the close of 2006, remittances from Ghanaians abroad are to go up by an incredible 700%.
This, according to the NDC spokesman, is not possible given that the average annual increase in remittances between 2001 to 2003 was not even 30%.
Mr Kwetey also urged President Kufuor to refrain from saying that there were about 2 million Ghanaians in the diaspora.
“World Bank figures show that as at 2005, the total number of Sub-Saharan Africans in the diaspora was only about 3.6 million, the majority of whom are Nigerians,” he said.
He explained that the President might be deliberately peddling these lies as a way of justifying the implementation of the ROPAA and deceiving the international community.
