The main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) says it welcomes the challenge by Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia for a fact-based reaction to his presentation on the economy at Kumasi.

Dr. Bawumia at his presentation at Town Hall Meeting in Kumasi Tuesday said the NDC should provide facts that are verifiable to challenge his claims.

Reacting to the challenge, former deputy Power Minister and member of the NDC Energy team John Jinapor said the NDC has better records than the NPP on development of the country.

“Dr Bawumia can decide that he will do statistical galamsey and not pay attention to the real figures. He says he wants data challenge, we welcome that comparison; they should bring it on. Because we hold much superior records when it comes to NDC and NPP,” he said at the party’s policy series on Wednesday.

Dr Bawumia in his address accused the Mahama administration of deliberately running the economy down when they were in power.

“Even in opposition, I alerted the country that on the basis of available data, eight banks were likely to collapse. I’m sure many of you remembered, I, as an opposition member, said: ‘Looking at the data, eight banks were going to collapse, you need to do something about it’, but they did nothing, they refused to act. Thanks to the Bank of Ghana’s cleanup exercise and the government’s decision to step in to provide financial support to ensure the orderly exit of the failed institutions, over a million depositors have had access to their deposits already and over 7,000 jobs have been saved as a result of employees who have been taken on by GCB Bank or Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited or the Receivers.

“Employees, whose salary benefits had been unpaid by the defunct institutions have been paid or are being paid by the Receivers. Can you imagine what would have happened in this country if 4.6 million depositors had lost their deposits? Can you imagine what would have happened in this country if we had allowed this collapse of 4.6 million depositors to lose their deposits and over 10,000 individuals to have lost their jobs.

“The benefits of the banking sector cleanup are evident for all to see. We now have a stronger and more resilient banking sector than ever before and the deposits in the banking system have increased significantly as customers’ confidence in the system has rebounded”.