National Communications Officer of the opposition NDC, Sammy Gyamfi has expressed his pessimism on the likely success of government’s Domestic Debt Exchange Program (DDEP).
Although government has announced about 85% success in the participation of the program, Sammy Gyamfi believes there are more than enough reasons to doubt the entire success of the program which seeks to reduce the ballooning public debt levels of the country.
Sammy Gyamfi, who was speaking to Dr. Randy Abbey on Good Morning Ghana aired on Metro TV on Thursday, February 16, 2023 argued that the DDEP has failed to address the fundamental problems of Ghana’s economy hence describing the exercise as useless.
Justifying his stance, he maintained that the continuous existence of the Economic Management Team led by Vice President Dr. Bawumia in addition to the continuous stay in office of the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta will not augur well for the success of the program.
He is therefore calling for the immediate dissolution of the Economic Management Team and the dismissal of Ken Ofori-Atta in order to make the program meaningful and useful.
“Any Debt Exchange Program is useless unless it is linked to the dissolution of the Bawumia-chaired Economic Management Team and the dismissal of the incompetent Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta who caused this mess,” Sammy Gyamfi noted.
One other condition required for the success of the program, according to Sammy Gyamfi, is for government to embark on aggressive expenditure rationalization. To the National Communications Officer of the NDC, failure to address these underlying problems mean the country will go round in circles without any meaningful impact of the DDEP.
He said, “any such Domestic Debt Exchange Program, is useless and meaningless unless it is linked to the genuine rationalization of government expenditure. Because, these two factors; the greed and selfishness of officials of this country who we entrusted with the management of this economy coupled with government’s reckless expenditure are what have brought us here. Till we deal with those underlying factors, we will return to this position over and over again.”
