If not for IMF, you would have collapsed Ghana’s economy – Otchere-Darko to NDC

Corporate Legal practitioner and a member of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Gabby Otchere-Darko, has hit hard on the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, saying he lacks economic development ideas.

According to him, when ex-president Mahama was in office, he had to rely on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to boost the economy.

Mr. Otchere-Darko’s words follow a statement made by the presidential candidate of the NDC during his campaign, that he was going to boost the economy should he win the December 7 elections.

“They said the economy has been the best that we have ever had since independence,” Mahama recounted.

“We have not been able to survive even one month [of coronavirus],” the ex-president jabbed, adding, “if we didn’t run to the IMF for the $1billion rapid credit facility, it is possible that in the next two months probably, salaries would not have been paid.”

The economy “is on ventilators and it needs thinking to rescue it from the ICU,” he added.

But Mr. Otchere-Darko in a tweet said: “A campaign message must be believable. Don’t promise to do something voters know you are not capable of doing. You called for external hands to rescue the economy for you when you were in office. Now, you say you are on a “rescue mission” and voters must believe you? Be serious!

The Mahama administration went to the Bretton Woods institution for a bailout in 2015.

The IMF bailout came along with stringent conditions such as job cuts in the public service in order to reduce the wage bill, and also placed a cap on the amount of loans Ghana could contract.