ghananlpcommunity/ghana-gov-speeches-sentences huggingface dataset:
Fuel prices had gone up on more than forty different occasions since 2017 before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict started.
THE FINANCIAL SECTOR BAILOUT EXCUSE The about GHS 25 billion which the government claims to have spent on the financial sector clean-up was a conscious policy decision made without due regard to superior alternatives like bailing out those banks with far less money, recovering assets and holding the people responsible for the mismanagement of the banks to rigorous account, through due process.
It was the NDC government that conducted the Asset Quality Review which determined that the banks in question were in distress.
We then proceeded to pass appropriate enabling legislation to give the force of law to the actions that were deemed necessary to address the situation.
The laws included the Banks and Specialized Deposit Taking Institutions Act (Act 930) and the Ghana Deposit Protection Act (Act 931).
Our objectives had always been to: avoid the collapse of these banks; to preserve and strengthen Ghanaian presence and participation in the Financial Sector which we viewed as a strategic economic objective; protect depositors’ investments; and protect the jobs of tens of thousands of employees of the banks.
The total cost of our bail-out plan was estimated at a maximum of GHS 9 billion.
This was going to be recovered in due course when the Banks had been returned to sound management and profitability.
But the outcome of the 2016 elections hampered our ability to fully implement this plan.
The logical expectation was that this government would continue from where we left off.
But they chose to go for the nuclear option.
They collapsed indigenous Ghanaian banks, some of which had been built from the hard work of our citizens and from scratch and had existed for decades and opted to pay depositors to the tune of GH¢25 billion.
Doubts however remain about the accuracy of this figure given that the Bank of Ghana reports only GH¢ 16 billion in its Summary of Economic and Financial Data.
A government that decides to spend a colossal GH¢25 billion on a GH¢ 9 billion problem and actively seeks political plaudits for same, cannot turn around and pass it off as reason for the current economic crisis.
THE EXCESS CAPACITY PAYMENTS EXCUSE The claim that GH¢17 billion has been spent on excess capacity payments in the energy sector and that it has contributed to the economic crisis is clearly untrue.
To mislead Ghanaians into accepting this dubious narrative, this government has deliberately peddled untruths about our power generation capacity and its evolution.
They have claimed that the NDC government added power generation capacity that we did not need and that due to ‘Take or Pay’ clauses in the power contracts, they have been forced to pay US$1 billion to Independent Power Producers (IPP) every year, since 2017.
The truth is that, in the NDC’s 2012 Manifesto which formed the basis for our election and mandate to govern between 2013 and 2017, we made a clear promise to ramp up our power generation capacity which at the time hovered around 2500MW, to 5000MW by 2016.
We were determined to meet demand which was growing exponentially and to resolve the recurring power deficit that led to crippling power rationing under all governments since the fourth republic began in 1993.
We followed through with this promise and expanded generation capacity with the completion of the Karpower and Ameri Plants.
We also commenced work on the Cenpower, AKSA, Amandi and Early Power plants.
By 2020, these plants had taken our generation capacity above 5000 MW in line with our objectives.
As we speak, available data shows that total installed power generation capacity is 5,367MW.
Out of this, only a little above 3,861MW is actually available and can be relied on.
Countrymen and women, as an illustration, on March 18, 2022, our peak demand climbed to 3,469 MW which means that only about 392 MW excess capacity existed to be relied upon if any of the plants had broken down that day.
This 392MW falls far short of the 18% excess margin (about 695 MW) which the energy commission recommends Ghana should have to keep the system running safely.
In plain terms, this means that now, we do not have sufficient power to meet peak demand and have adequate reserve margin to meet any emergency.
This, in turn, means that we stand the real risk of suffering crippling power rationing if any of the available plants should develop major faults.
What, therefore, is the basis for the often-repeated claims of excess capacity for which we are told US$1 billion is paid to IPPs annually?
Exactly where is that excess capacity considering the facts, I have shared with you?
Put to strict proof under Parliamentary scrutiny, the Finance Minister disclosed only last year, that US$937 million had been paid in total for excess capacity from 2017 to 2020.
It is inconceivable that any leader in these times of crisis and hardships would seek to shirk responsibility, absolve himself of blame and fail woefully to show leadership.
It is the duty of leaders to acknowledge problems, take responsibility and move swiftly to address them as I did when confronted with the power challenges in my time.
I could have conveniently blamed the age-old underinvestment in the energy sector, but I was acutely aware that Ghanaians did not elect me to complain and blame others for problems, so I moved to fix it.
And I fixed it.
President Akufo-Addo and his Head of the Economic Management Team must imbibe this key leadership attribute of taking responsibility especially in circumstances where the overwhelming evidence shows that our present dire economic straits is the direct outcome of their poor economic policy choices and wasteful expenditure.
E-LEVY AND WASTE OF FUNDS Governments since the 4 th Republic have all invested in digital infrastructure in order to modernize our economy.
In my time as President, we laid the most extensive number of kilometers of fibre optic cable and further provided 4G LTE wireless broadband in order to bring all parts of our country into the new digital revolution.
Through these investments we have created the opportunity for Ghanaians to enjoy the ease of electronics transactions.
Indeed, Ghanaians have taken to the ease of electronic transactions very well.
Mobile money payments are used for remittances to parents in the villages, they are used in the markets and supermarkets to pay for groceries purchased, they are used by market women and other traders to pay for replenishing their stocks, and they are used at filling stations to pay for fuel and services.
Internet and electronic banking have made it easier to move money from account to account without the use of cheques or cash transfers.
This is a positive development for our economy and represents the fastest means of shrinking the informal economy and bringing us all into the formal one.
Unfortunately, in the face of this self-inflicted economic catastrophe, this government against all sound advice has decided to introduce the E-Levy, a regressive tax that heaps more suffering on Ghanaians.
Recently our President was asked in a BBC interview, why he was choosing to tax the incomes of Ghanaians in their electronic wallets that had already been taxed.
The President’s answer was that it is the newest and fastest growing sector of our economy that is not being taxed.
Clearly the President did not understand the question, or he is clueless about the regressive nature of the E-Levy.
A worker gets paid in his electronic wallet.
His PAYE tax has been deducted already.
For every transfer or purchase above GHS100 he makes on his e-wallet, he has to pay an additional 1.5% tax.
It will now be tempting for such a person to draw cash from his e-wallet and make the payment for his groceries, fuel, entertainment, utility bills etc.
all with cash.
The collection of the E-Levy began yesterday and as though a slap in the face, it began on May Day.
Already there is a litany of complaints about the implementation.
There are complaints of transfers of under GHS100 being subject to tax contrary to the law.
Government’s desperation to tax Ghanaians to get the nation out of the hell hole it has dumped us will not succeed because Government’s own budget proposals show that the e-levy will not make any significant contribution in resolving our problems but would exert an adverse toll on the people of Ghana.
We in the NDC do not oppose taxation as a principle.
We will not be pretentious and couch fanciful slogans to condemn the principle of taxation like the NPP did in the past.
We are, however, implacably opposed to distortionary and burdensome taxes like the e-levy that only force Ghanaians to endure more suffering.
A new National Democratic Congress Government, God willing and with the votes of the sovereign people of Ghana – in 2025 – will repeal the E-Levy Act.
Even as this government remains fixated with taxing their way out of economic mismanagement, the Akufo-Addo government has been wasteful.
They have failed to demonstrate prudence in public financial management.
The people of Ghana cannot be called upon to pay more taxes only for the accruing money belonging to the people of Ghana, to be dubiously and wastefully shared among family and friends through various fraudulent procurement practices.
The creature comforts of the President and his officials cannot be more paramount than the need to protect the public purse and make savings that can be invested in more useful ventures.
Ventures such as: education, health, and social housing for Ghanaians.
The 2020 Auditor-General’s report makes for grim reading within the context of waste and corruption in the use of public funds.
The report revealed that a colossal GH¢12 billion was lost to corruption and other forms of financial malpractices in 2020 alone.
This is twice the amount that the unpopular e-levy is supposed to accrue this year.
It has also recently come to light that our State-Owned Enterprises made total losses of about GH¢5.3 billion in 2020.
Another report has revealed that up to GHS 9 billion of losses was incurred by Energy Sector SOEs between 2018 and 2021.
How can the taxpayer ever be called upon to pay more when his money is going down the drain in this manner?
MISRULE AND POOR GOVERNANCE Beyond the economic mismanagement, hardships, unemployment, and other forms of misrule exhibited by this government, are the deeply worrying issues of high-handedness, intolerance for criticism and outright abuse of the rights of citizens deemed to be critical of this administration.
In the last few years, several notable critics of this government and social activists have been subjected to unjustified arrests and prosecutions with some having already served custodial sentences.
It is obvious that this government has become edgy and jittery due to the myriad of problems it has created which have so frustrated Ghanaians and incurred their righteous indignation.
They have therefore developed hyper-sensitivity to the mildest form of criticisms and have evolved a strategy to suppress dissent by making dubious examples of some of the most prominent opposing voices in the media and political space to dissuade others from intensifying the criticism.
I have already cautioned that the penchant for unjustified arrests, detentions and prosecutions poses a grave threat to the freedoms of citizens as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution and will mar our good standing as a serious democracy.
Consequently, it comes as little surprise that Ghana’s human rights record has come under such robust scrutiny and scathing indictment in the 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices released by the US State Department.
The analysis of human rights violations contained in the report constitute a major setback to the efforts to entrench freedoms and rights as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution whose 30 th Anniversary we just marked last week.
For the first time under the fourth republic, eight Ghanaians were brutally gunned down during elections in 2020 by agents of the state and government and yet no action has been taken against the perpetrators.
It has been over a year since these killings took place, but the President has not taken the trouble to publicly indicate his revulsion at them or even sympathize with the bereaved families.
He has refused to acknowledge these extra-judicial killings that made him President.
He has also taken no clear action to hold the perpetrators to account.
These killings were preceded by similar unprovoked violent attacks on members of the opposition by militant groups operating under the aegis of this government during the Ayawaso West Wuogon bye-elections and at other times.
No Government in our recent history has demonstrated a lack of democratic temperament in dealing with issues of dissent and public criticism than the one headed by Nana Akufo-Addo.
Ghanaians have witnessed a government, which though was popularly elected, in 2016, has behaved more like a Military regime than a civilian one.
The lack of accountability, arrogance of power, human rights violations, pursuit of selective justice, muzzling of the media and critical voices, targeted collapse of opponents businesses, closure of opposition radio stations, state capture, nepotism, politicization, and deliberate undermining of the independence of state institutions among others, are all unfortunate characteristics of Nana Akufo Addo’s administration.
I believe I speak for the NDC and our MPs and Ghanaians when I say, these acts will not break our collective and patriotic resolve to hold this government to account no matter how many times they come after us.
Suppression of the opposition and critical voices have never kept any government in power beyond what the people can tolerate.
It can no longer be hidden that this situation has significantly undermined public confidence and the belief of international actors in the neutrality of many state institutions including our Judiciary.
There is a prevailing perception of bias and partisanship which has not been helped by the litany of bizarre court rulings in recent times; some of which clearly defy comprehension and perceived to be designed to further the interest of the executive.
This also threatens investor confidence and our efforts to project Ghana as a viable investment destination because investors expect to have unbiased justice delivery should they require litigation.
Rather than sweeping this under the carpet, we should encourage frank debate over it with the view to building stronger institutions whose fidelity would be to the state and Ghanaians, not political parties, or appointing authorities.
SOME ALTERNATIVES Ghana is at a crossroads and the need to institute important corrective measures cannot be overstated.
There is no shortage of solutions to our problems.
It is the indolence and avid affinity of this government for a cosmetic approach to governance that has brought us here.
Thus, we need far-reaching actions from the President and his Economic Management Team to resolve our challenges.
Despite the challenges I remain confident that despite the current gloom, we can turn things around and create a brighter future for ourselves.
Ghana’s best days are still ahead.
Those directly responsible for the economic crisis must bear responsibility and it is inconceivable that the Minister of Finance remains at post, having presided over the worst economic meltdown in Ghana’s recent history.
The President must, without further delay, relieve the finance minister of his position and appoint someone who is focused on national rather than self-interest and who has the requisite skill, experience, and knowledge of public financial management in his stead.
The personal benefit that the current minister and his cronies derives from borrowing on our behalf through the commissions taken by his companies who serve as transaction advisers raises an unacceptable conflict of interest situation which must end immediately.
It goes without saying that the Economic Management Team, has failed and must be reconstituted immediately, with fresh ideas and perspectives.
Having supervised the worst public debt buildup, the worst budget deficit, the worst debt to GDP ratio, the worst credit ratings and downgrades, the worst performing currency in the world, the worst crisis of confidence in our economy, the highest fuel prices ever, ever-rising inflation and unprecedented hardships, the current Head of the Economic Management Team (EMT) has clearly fallen from his ivory tower as a self-styled economic messiah to a poster boy for economic mismanagement and his leadership of the EMT is no longer tenable.
He has lost sight of cause and effects relationships in the economic value chain and complains that our dire economic state is due to bad ratings from international agencies, rather than the fact that our dissipating economy resulted in those bad ratings.
How does that assure Ghanaians he is focused on the critical things that need addressing?
The EMT has been bedeviled by their own ineptness, over exuberance and excessive focus on linear thinking of a theoretical cause and effect relationship, devoid of the practical influences of complex real-life nuances.
In short, the EMT assumed a laboratory experimental approach, typically found in textbooks, to the extremely complex Ghanaian economy, and analysed the impact of one variable at a time.
I have often said to people, in most cases, when you are analysing the Ghanaian economy and an obvious simple solution comes to mind, THINK, THINK AND THINK again.
The consequence of this lack of depth and experience complicated the problems of economic management with excessive, yet costly experimentations that did not yield viable results.
Alternatively, the President may want to consider appointing one of the many highly qualified Ghanaian public finance management experts to lead the EMT.
The President must as a matter of urgency reshuffle his cabinet.
More than 5 years of an administration without a major cabinet reshuffle has calcified the management of the Ministries, departments and agencies.
These MDAs and SOEs have become fiefdoms in which untouchable Ministers and heads of agencies are now monarchs of all they survey.
Yet they lack the energy, passion, and ideas to turn moribund situations within the MDAs around.
Fresh ideas are needed.
Morale is at a low in these MDAs.
The seriousness of the economic meltdown must compel government to unveil a clear and workable cause of action, emanating from broad based thinking and consultation, rather than its current state of denial and wrong causal attributions.
Such broad consultation must lead to a Post-COVID Economic Recovery Plan.
A programme that will focus our energies on building an economy whose fruits of growth will benefit all Ghanaians and give everyone a fair chance at success.
The participants of this broad-based consultation must reflect the demographic, social and economic status mix of the country.
There must be a clear and measurable reduction in government expenditure.
Even though this is not an easy cause of action, it is a necessary one, nonetheless.
I will be the first to admit after running the economy on zero percent, 0%, Central bank financing in 2016.
However, a crisis such as this requires drastic measures.
I am of the view that, an open and transparent discussion of the true situation with the citizenry will help achieve this objective.
The President must lead the way in the demonstration of prudence and modesty in the use of public resources.
He must put an end to the ostentation and opulence and show sensitivity and respect for Ghanaians by using the Presidential jet acquired with taxpayers’ money and stop the rental of expensive jets.
Only then would he have led by the power of his example, to quote Bill Clinton, to enable Ghanaians make meaning of the sacrifices he is making to get us out of the doldrums.
The extravagance must give way to frugal application of public resources.
We cannot live beyond our means and expect not to fall into debt and financial ruin.
Related to this, government must drastically cut and trim down its size, rationalise and bring to reasonable levels, the pay packages of CEOs of SOEs, other senior public servants and heads of state organisations.
The time has come to look at the practice of providing free utilities and the allowances such as inconvenience allowance, entertainment allowance and other such innovative allowances that are crafted just as income enhancers.
The practice of setting up amorphous and poorly structured public agencies to run one-off, ad hoc policies must also stop and those already created must be merged with more established and time-tested agencies already carrying out similar functions to curtail the needless duplication and waste.
There must be a real effort to plug the loopholes that facilitate the unconscionable losses of public funds incurred through financial malpractices as revealed by the Auditor-General and the losses incurred by SOEs.
Strict compliance with public financial management rules and laws must be enforced.
Government must limit borrowing significantly.
If we all agree we are in an economic abyss, submerged under the suffocating weight of unsustainably high levels of debt and are at risk of default, then the wise thing to do is to limit borrowing.
Government must as a matter of urgency issue a moratorium on all non-concessional borrowing to avoid an increase in our public debt.
After the issuance of this moratorium, the dithering must stop, and very urgent steps must be taken to confront the debt problem.
The stark reality is that in our current situation, it is just not possible to be servicing our debt at the present levels and have any significant resources left to meet critical expenditure obligations.
It is obvious that this government has no plan on how to handle the debt crisis.
I note that Government refused to take advantage of the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) and the Common Platform for Debt Treatments beyond the DSSI, because of the peculiar nature of Ghana’s debt profile where only about 20% is from multilateral and bilateral partners.
The bulk of our debt is from the international credit market and other commercial borrowers with default triggers related to bilateral and multilateral reprieves.
Government must open a discussion with the multilateral finance partners and our creditors on a debt restructuring programme which will ease our debt burden and create some fiscal space to allow expenditure in critical sectors of the economy that are currently starved of funds.
Rationalizing and enforcing strict compliance of our tax laws in areas such as the extractive sector, including a pragmatic legislation of the tax exemptions regime can help improve resources inflow.
For example, a simple insistence that mining companies relay their export revenues into Ghana, as per the relevant laws, rather than keeping such funds offshore, as is the current case, can help exchange rate stability.
We must achieve a national consensus on these alternatives and take proactive steps as soon as possible.
The longer we tarry, the worse the situation will get.
While implementing these measures, government must adequately signal to the international finance providers a clear effort at meeting future obligations.
Government must commit to using some of the windfalls that we earned from the rising crude oil prices to revitalise the sinking fund in anticipation of future debt servicing.
We estimate that the hikes in crude oil prices will translate into a GH¢3 billion or about US$550 million windfall for government this year.
Part of this money must go into the sinking fund to build buffers for repayment of the 2025 maturing Eurobond.
Government must also take immediate steps to restore credibility to the management of the economy.
A contributing factor to the plummeting of investor confidence in our economy is the practice of underreporting and concealment of key economic indices like the budget deficit, public debt, and Net International Reserves.