Yaw Buaben Asamoa slams IMF advocates

Yaw Buaben Asamoa, NPP National Communications Director and former Adenta MP, has subtly responded to Gabby Otchere-Darko's seeming call for the government to reconsider her decision not to resort to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financial assistance.

Gabby Otchere-Darko, a member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and cousin to President Nana Akufo-Addo, has stoked discussions over whether or not the government should seek help from the IMF following his recent tweets about the economy.

IMF And Matters Arising

In a tweet on Monday, Mr. Otchere-Darko asked the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government to "pretty quickly" "inject confidence in our capacity to ride this heavy storm".

He argued that “Covid-19 and War in Ukraine are not of Africa’s doing, but more to our doom. A programme that pretends it is all our doing is doomed to fail”.

"Ghana is a member of the IMF. The world is in serious crisis. Ours is not helped by our high debt and low-income levels. With the economy still growing, but investor confidence low, govt being compelled to cut down capital expenditures will eventually lead to job losses unless..." he added.

On his position on the IMF, he said; “Am I against an IMF program in principle? No. I am not for an IMF program that throws peanuts at us but imposes conditions that will end up hurting the poor, jobs, and businesses more."

Gabby also raised issues with the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy) implemented by the government to generate revenues for the infrastructure development of the country.

He tweeted; "after 5 months of stalemate and bashing, the e-levy, after implementation, is delivering only 10% of estimated revenues; our revenues remain very low as compared to the rest of the world; debt levels dangerously high, cedi like most currencies, struggling against the dollar."

Government-Stakeholder Meeting On Economy

The Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, has also disclosed that the government will, from Monday, June 27 to Wednesday, June 29, 2022, conduct a series of engagements with key sector players in the economy to assess the impact of the economic mitigation measures announced in March this year.

Revealing this in an interview with journalists in Accra, the Minister said the engagements are to enable the government to determine whether or not the measures have alleviated the adverse effects of recent global crises on the citizenry and also to enable the Ministers of State to make recommendations on what to do to further cushion Ghanaians in these times of difficulties.

Yaw Buaben Asamoa's Reply

With discussions advancing about whether or not the government should resort to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financial assistance and with the management of Ghana's economy, Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoa has counseled the government to strike out any considerations to go to the IMF.

To him, the conditions that the IMF would impose on the country are already being resolved by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo through his policies.

Referencing the Finance Minister assured Ghanaians that there would be a 50% cut in fuel coupons for government officials and a 30% cut in expenditure, he asked "do we have implementation statistics about that?"

He was of a strong view that Ghana can and must be self-reliant, so called for massive cooperation between the government and the citizenry in the monitoring, implementation, and evaluation of the social intervening policies by the government aimed to assuage the Ghanaian populace.

However, he was worried about how the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia administration is going as he questioned why the government hasn't yet published the implementation statistics on its policies for Ghanaians to know what they have done.

Speaking on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo", Mr. Buaben Asamoa urged the President and his government to revisit some policies from 2018 that they told the populace they would do, and implement those that have been delayed.

He further advised them to use their stakeholder meeting to fill the citizens in on the policies that they have done or are in the process of accomplishing for the benefit of the nation.

"We didn't implement what we, ourselves, would have benefited ourselves which we said we would do. The 2018 budget was developed by the Government of Ghana. So, why have we not created an opportunity for the private sector to contribute to education when we all desire free SHS, free TVET?"