Ghana is in safer hands - Bawumia

Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has re-assured Ghanaians that the country is safe under the ledership of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

According to him, the Nana Addo-led government will deliver as promised all what they said during their campaign time.

"I can assure Ghanaians that Ghana is in safer hands and we will deliver" he said.

Speaking at a forum organized by Accra-based radio station, Joy FM, the Vice President also noted that government is reprofiling the country's debt as a matter of strategy to enable to the first cedi bond under the Akufo-Addo government is a ‘deal of the year’

He said the country would replace its short-term debt with long-term debt adding the recent bond issued some two weeks ago was part of the reprofiling strategy.

“What is so remarkable about what I call the deal of the year so far is that we have been able to get foreign exchange without increasing our debt stock."

“Many people didn’t understand the transaction and thought that we have gone to borrow $2 billion to add to Ghana’s debt. No! we are actually replacing more expensive debt with less expensive debt and elongating it and making it better for this country" he said.

Dr Bawumia disclosed that in the process of doing that, Ghana has witnessed a massive increase in its foreign exchange reserves.

The former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank also explained that government has created a lot of fiscal debt by capping earmarked funds to 25 percent of government revenue and realigning expenditures to government priorities.

This, he said, is a remarkable reform as budgets from 2011-2015 attempted to do that but never did it.

“We did in our first budget and it created some space for us because we were heading into a ditch. You take wages; interest payments, statutory payment and they exceeded all your revenue.

He said this made it difficult to manage the economy and the capping made that possible.

Being a highly indebted country, there was the need to reprofile Ghana’s public debt, which stands at GHC120 billion in 2016.