Akufo-Addo has destroyed citizens’ trust in state investment – Adongo

Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central Constituency, Isaac Adongo, says the Akufo-Addo government has destroyed the trust citizens had in investing their money with the state.

According to the MP for Bolga, individuals got their monies stuck in the bank under the financial sector clean-up but resorted to investing their funds with the state.

He believes that the government’s refusal to pay them their due interest on their bonds will go a long way to destroy their trust in state investment.

For the past two weeks, members of the Pensioner Bondholders Forum have been picketing at the Finance Ministry for a total exemption from the government’s debt exchange program.

Pensioner Bondholder Forum has requested that Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta write to them explicitly declaring their exemption from the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme.

The government on Monday announced that it had achieved over 80% participation of eligible bonds in the Domestic Exchange programme.

Individual bondholders and pensioners who did not participate in the program were assured that their coupons would be honoured when they matured.

But despite the assurances, the Lead Convener of the Pensioner Bondholder Forum, Dr. Adu Antwi, in an interview with Starr News, insisted that the only move that will stop their continuous picketing at the Finance Ministry is the Finance Minister writing to them to expressly exempt them, as was done in the case of pension funds.

Speaking to Francis Abban on Morning Starr, he said, "It is as if the financial sector has done something to these people. Under something they call the financial sector clean-up, they wiped out over 400 of our financial institutions. People have their money locked up all over the place, and to date, people have not been able to collect their money. As if that is not enough, they now go on and attack the capital market, and now they have enumerated our capital market. People give money to the government because the government cannot have enough resources. To do all the things, we need to do to eliminate the deficit in development structure."

The deputy ranking member of the finance committee goes on to say that people were ready to lend their money to the government due to the trust they had in them, which has finally been destroyed.

"And when the government now goes to the people to say, lend me some money so I develop the economy and pay you later. It is based on the trust between the citizenry and the Ghanaian sovereign, not Akufo-Addo or Ken Ofori Atta. They don’t borrow on the back of their integrity; they borrow on the back of the sovereign. The trust and the integrity of our sovereign and that no matter what, our government will pay, and that anybody else can disappoint you but not your government. And that is why we will refer to government debt as risk-free. We were taught that; it is quite clear that we were mistaught. Because we didn’t know that there would be a naïve experimental economist called Dr. Bawumia who would come and reverse all those principles for us. And that is where we are now," Mr. Adongo explained.

He added, "So, the trust that we built in our people, it took a long time for Ghanaians to believe in their government again and to lend to their government. And people will not engage in business and give their money to the government. We were able to scale that for over 40 years of our lives. Today we are back there where the people of Ghana will be very reluctant to give their money to the government. And no government will function if people with excess funds will not lend to the government for the government to develop the country. This is what they have done to us and yet they act like there are no consequences".

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