Ghana’s Debt Has Crossed HIPC Proportions – Sammy Gyamfi.

 

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) is insisting that Ghana has the features of a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) even if it has not officially been classified as one.

“We wish to reiterate the assertion by our flagbearer, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama, that President Akufo-Addo has supervised the degeneration of Ghana’s economy back to the same unsustainable debt position we were when we joined the HIPC programme 19 years ago,” the party said at a press conference held on Wednesday, October 28, 2020.

Addressing the press, the NDC’s Communication Officer, Sammy Gyamfi, said the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) had made similar claims in the past to critique management of the economy.

“You may recall, that in the run-up to the 2016 general elections, the New Patriotic Party, led by its over-hyped economic messiah, Dr. Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia and then Candidate Akufo-Addo, berated the NDC for what they described as excessive borrowing by the Mahama government.”

“The NPP led by Dr. Bawumia, described Ghana’s debt position at the time, as unsustainable and went on to describe the country as a Highly Indebted Lower Middle Income Country (HIMIC).”

Ghana’s total debt at the end of July 2020 rose to GHS263.1 billion and provisional figures from the Finance Ministry in June indicated that the debt stock at the time was around 66 percent of GDP.

The International Monetary Fund expects Ghana’s debt-to-GDP-ratio to hit 76.7 percent.

The NDC feels that the “current debt position 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 percent. As a matter of fact, our debt position this year is the worst ever in the history of our fourth republican democracy.”