Bawumia's picture of the economy distorted - Kwakye Ofosu

Deputy Information Minister, Felix Kwakye Ofosu has accused the Vice Presidential candidate of the opposition NPP, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia of lying to Ghanaians with fallacious figures on Ghana’s economy. He is of a view that, the NPP guru presented a mere propaganda economic lecture to Ghanaians.

At a Distinguished Speaker series lecture organised at the Central University College on Tuesday, Bawumia said Ghana is in an economic crisis because NDC wanted to win the 2012 elections.

According to the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, the country is no longer described as a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) but rather a Highly Indebted Middle-Income Country (HIMIC) because of the ruling NDC’s recklessness, incompetence and sanctioned corruption.

Presenting his facts and figures, Dr. Bawumia noted that between 2001 and 2008, Ghana’s GDP quadrupled.

He further opined that Ghana also received $4.2bn in debt-relief after completing the unpopular Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) programme.

But Felix described Bawumia’s facts as deceptive after pouring government's own facts on Facebook.

Read below Felix Ofosu Kwakye’s assertion on Facebook [unedited] Dr Bawumia made many misleading claims yesterday. Among other claims, Dr Bawumia sought to create the impression that Capital Expenditure has reduced since the NPP left office.

To further mislead his audience; he presented a distorted picture by reporting capex as a percentage of GDP. He claimed that capex as a percentage of GDP has reduced from about 9% under the NPP to 4% under the NDC government.

Dr Bawumia, if he was not minded to do partisan propaganda, would have known that one needs to look at actual capital expenditure in absolute terms, not as a percentage of GDP as this is misleading. As the GDP of a country grows, increased expenditure when measured against GDP, can appear smaller.

For instance, total nominal GDP in 2008 was GHC 30.17 Billion.9% of this is GHC 2.7153 Billion. Last year total nominal GDP was GHC 113 Billion .4% of this comes to GHC 4.52 Billion which is almost twice what was spent in 2008.