Debt relief under HIPC is media-hype - Mumuni

The Member of Parliament for Kumbugu, Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni has described recent government announcements of debt relief being granted Ghana as a result of opting for the HIPC initiative, as a media-hype.

"We really are not been very candid with the issues as they are", he told the Network Herald. There is so much disenchantment about the HIPC initiative even in other countries, which have opted for it. "For me as a legislator, I haven't seen it concretely. I haven't seen any agreement or some kind of commitment by the government or something I can refer to for my own satisfaction, independently of what the government is saying."

To Mumuni, there is no objective way of verifying some of the claims by government that the HIPC initiative is yielding a lot of dividend for the country.

The government announced recently that its French counterpart has indicated that it will write-off Ghana's official bilateral trade debt owed her as a gesture of support for the nation's HIPC Initiative.

The Minister for Finance, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, also announced that the United Kingdom has agreed to write off Ghana's debt owed her if Ghana is able to reach the decision point of the Heavily Indebted Poor (HIPC) Initiative.

Mumuni dismisses all these announcements saying it's all media-hype and government's attempt to generate public support for the initiative which remains one of the very unpopular decisions the Kufuor administration has taken since it assumes power.

Although he shares the view that the government deserves some time to get its acts together as far as the management of the economy is concerned, the MP also believes that six months is enough for a determined and purposeful administration to begin showing signs of improvement and changes. "The signs there are, are purely cosmetic, and there are so much media-hype about most of the things. This is my disappointment."

In spite of the goodwill the NPP administration is enjoying, Mumuni believes that the NDC is capable of wrestling power from it in the next election. "The front of goodwill that the NPP is enjoying is heavily on the decline, and the people are going to get back on them pretty soon." Meanwhile, the President has made the HIPC issue the main topic of his two-day visit to the Eastern Region as he told the people about the deteriorated economic conditions his government inherited on taking office, which he explained necessitated the decision to adopt the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPIC) Initiative.

He said, however, that bitter as the decision might be, it was the truth that had won the government the confidence and sympathy of donor countries and institutions leading to the decision of Britain, Canada, Holland, Italy and France to cancel the country's debts. The World Bank, he said, had also decided to grant the country 100 million dollars to help resuscitate the economy.

President Kufuor told the people that as a result of the adoption of the HIPC initiative, the government would save 300 million dollar, which it would otherwise have used to service debts, and invest it in the provision of social services such as schools, health care and utilities. He appealed for patience and hard work from the people to enable the government to tackle its development programme now that the constitutional structures including the Council of State were in place.

The decision to allow the increase in the price of fuel and tariffs on water and electricity were due to the inability of the previous government to face the reality of the situation and service the debts owed to crude oil producers, Kufuor said.

"We are now paying for the actual producer cost of petroleum products without any subsidy from government", he explained, adding that allowing the 100 per cent utility tariffs increase was to enable the producers to operate efficiently but not to impose hardships on the people. `