Communications Officer for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi, has said Ghanaians are facing “painful economic hardship” under the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo administration.
According to Sammy Gyamfi, “per our current total Public debt of GHS258.8 billion (i.e. as at June 2020), every Ghanaian in Ghana today is indebted to the tune of about GHS10,000.”
Sammy Gyamfi at a press briefing on Monday said the country’s public debt has surpassed the suitable debt verge “There is no gainsaying the fact that our current debt position (i.e debt to GDP ratio of 76.7%), is highly unsustainable and exceeds the acceptable debt threshold. Indeed, our current debt position is worse than where we were when we joined the HIPC debt relief program in the year 2001, at which time our debt to GDP ratio stood at 61%. As a matter of fact, our debt position this year is the worst ever in the history of our 4th republican democracy.
This has resulted in a situation where over 90% of our domestic revenue is spent on debt servicing.”
Sammy Gyamfi further stressed that Ghana’s buoyant economy has been destroyed. “Per the 2020 mid-year budget review statement, domestic revenue from January 2020 to June 2020, stood at GHS21, 682,896,236. Of this amount, GHS19, 599,639,701, representing 90.4% of domestic revenue, was used for debt servicing alone within this period.
What this shows is that our ever-rising Public debt and its attendant high debt servicing amount (interest payments and amortization), has so deteriorated the country’s fiscal space, such that today, after we service our debts, very little revenue is left and the government has to borrow for Compensation, Goods & Services and Capital Expenditure (CAPEX).”
