Former Deputy Finance Minister under the John Mahama-led administration George Kweku Ricketts-Hagan says the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government is confused over the running of the economy. The Cape Coast South Member of Parliament says “there is a problem with this government because they are always confused in whatever they are doing”.

Mr Ricketts-Hagan made the observations on TV3’s New Day hosted by Bright Nana Amfoh on Tuesday. He was contributing to discussions on the presentation of the mid-year review budget by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, on Monday.

“Everything about this government comes as an afterthought because the budget review presentation came as a motion, which means that they had agreed to be a motion, but at the last minute, they changed it to be a statement,” the National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP explained.

He said “[government and the Majority in Parliament] did not want to provoke a debate on the motion,” and that is why it was changed to a statement in the last minute.

“They didn’t want to come to Parliament to disgrace themselves that they are going to borrow but they are setting off…to fail because they were putting their hopes on oil revenue from TEIN and SANKOFA,” the MP pointed out. “The NPP have cosmetic words and jargons for everything.

The type of economics that they are doing is the tom-and jerry-type,” he added. On the other hand, the MP for Mfantseman Constituency in the Central Region, Ekow Hayford, said “because of the prudent policies we have put in place, there was no need to ask for additional money”.