Stephen Ayesu Ntim
National Chairman of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Stephen Ayesu Ntim, has described the presentation by the NDC on the state of Ghana’s economy as disingenuous.
According to him, as much as the NPP government acknowledges there are difficulties with the economy, it has shown the will to fix them.
Reacting to the recent state of the nation address (SONA) by the NDC, Mr. Ntim said his colleagues in the opposition party only sought to misinform Ghanaians on the current state of the economy.
The NPP Chairman stated that the NDC, as usual, failed to provide alternative policies to address the current challenges, except criticism and distorted accounts of the state of the nation.
He said at a press conference in Accra yesterday, “Activities leading to the NDC’s UPSA press conference were dramatised as though the NDC had something unprecedented to present. It was an anticlimax because, in the end, nothing new was said except the same old exaggeration and deliberate misrepresentation of facts.”
“The statement read by the NDC Chairman, Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketia, was far from a document seeking to discuss the state of our country. There was no serious analysis of the economy, no assessment of sectoral developments, and no attempt to propose solutions to the current economic challenges,” he added.
Mr. Ntim said the current challenges with the Ghanaian economy is not peculiar to the nation, but a phenomenon across the globe, having been induced by the COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war.
For him, it was wrong for the NDC to deliberately peddle falsehood on the state of the economy as if Ghana was the only country embroiled in challenges.
He stated, “The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, confirmed the impact of COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war on the United States economy and how difficult the effort to rebuild has been.”
“Kenya, one of the most dynamic economies in East Africa, has recently run out of US dollars,” he noted.
Mr. Ntim also took a swipe at the NDC for accusing the government of appointing people to “needless positions and paying them for not doing anything.”
He explained that 658 workers, constituting about 66%, out of the 995 workers engaged at the Presidency are public sector employees.
According to him, this figure is far less than what happened under the leadership of former President Mahama during the NDC era.
He said while the NPP had 44 presidential staffers and one Minister of State at the Presidency, the NDC administration led by Mr. Mahama had 61 presidential staffers, six Ministers of State as well as three wise men.
These were in addition to a valuer, brand executive, citizenship development officer, among several others.
On corruption, Mr. Ntim noted that though the NDC has consistently labeled former President Kufuor and President Akufo-Addo as corrupt, the NDC could not convict any single appointee of the Kufuor administration when it assumed power in 2009.
He, however, said it was only NDC officials who have been convicted for corruption-related offences under the Fourth Republic.
“Do you remember—create loot and share? That is the NDC’s record,” he intimated.
He appealed to Ghanaians to ignore the NDC’s shouts and name-calling, which is a ploy to court disaffection for the government.
The NPP Chairman also called on Ghanaians to disregard overborrowing narrative by the NDC, describing it as propaganda to throw dust into the eyes of the public.
He stated that former President Kufuor, who inherited a debt stock of GH¢5.4 billion in 2001, only added about 81 per cent, while the NDC government increased the debt stock to GH¢122 billion, representing 819 per cent when they left office in 2016.
By Ebenezer K. Amponsah