Bawumia’s analysis of 2016 budget "pedestrian propaganda"

Deputy Communications Minister Felix Kwakye Ofosu has described Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia's analysis of the 2016 budget as “hackneyed and pedestrian propaganda”.

According to him, in spite of the attempts by NPP's vice presidential candidate to glorify the economic achievement of the erstwhile Kufuor administration, the highest ever growth rate recorded in the history of Ghana has been under the NDC government.

“Despite Bawumia's bluster, the highest ever growth rate recorded in Ghana's history of 14.4% was recorded under an NDC government. Their highest ever growth rate of 8.4% is still lower that the NDC's second highest of 8.8%.

“The fact also remains that the longest ever period of sustained single digit inflation of 33 months was recorded under the NDC. Guess what Bawumia and the NPP's record is; one month of single digit inflation,” Kwakye Ofosu wrote on his Facebook wall.

The former deputy governor of the Central Bank in his analysis of the budget statement presented by finance minister Seth Terkper last month said the Ghanaian economy has dwindled under the Mahama administration.

“The NPP’s record on economic growth compares with the uneven and recently declining growth rates achieved by the NDC Mills-Mahama, Mahama administrations. In 2009 growth rate swung down to 4.0%; in 2010 it grew at 8.0% and upped to 14.0 per cent with the onset of oil production.

“For 2012 the GDP growth registered 8.8%, climbing down to 7.6 in 2013 and plummeting to 4.1% in 2014. The provisional 2015 GDP growth rate is 4.1% and for the first time since the inclusion of oil revenues beginning from 2011 the non-oil component of the GDP growth of 4.2% is higher than the overall real GDP growth rate of 4.1%. In 2014 the revised figures indicate that GDP growth rate was 4.0% same as the non-oil GDP growth.

“In the eight years of the NDC government, the size of the economy would have increased from $28.5 billion in 2008 to a projected $39.4 billion in 2016 (with oil), a 52% increase compared to the 500% increase witnessed under the NPP (without oil),” Bawumia told party supporters in Accra Wednesday.