Loans: NPP sees debt, NDC sees investments – Fifi Kwetey

For referring to the government’s foreign loans for infrastructure development as debt, Transport Minister Fiifi Kwetey has said the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) lacks foresight.

According to Mr Kwetey, President John Dramani Mahama is building a bright future for the people of Ghana with the foreign loans.

Addressing a press conference in Accra on Thursday September 22, dubbed the ‘2016 Series of Setting the Records Straight’, Mr Kwetey said: “Our first president Kwame Nkrumah described the forebears of the NPP as visionless for failing to realise that the loans that were being contracted in the early ’60s for the construction of great projects such as the Akosombo Dam, the motorway, the Tema Harbour etc., were investments rather than debt. We will not go so far to describe the NPP in that term but the fact that nearly six decades after Nkrumah made that statement the NPP tradition is still holding the same position unfortunately reveals their pitiful lack of foresight.”

The Ketu South legislator said unlike the NPP, the NDC has a great record of using foreign loans for solid investment.

“[With] issues relating to foreign debts, for us in the NDC, foreign loans are meant for investments. Because NPP borrowed $750million from the international financial market in 2007 and despite this huge amount NPP borrowed, NPP still failed to allocate $1 out of this amount to pay for the critical gang of four roads that NPP needed to do. NPP’s priority in 2008 after they borrowed at the end of 2007 was procuring prepaid meters, buying locomotives when they had not even built one centimetre of rail line and using some of that money actually when they were hot in November 2008 to pay salaries. This was at the time when NPP needed to critically get money for this gang of four roads but that was their priority. Most likely because NPP was wasteful with foreign loans, the party somehow assumes that the NDC has the same problem. We in the NDC have a great record of using foreign debt to invest in solid investment.”

Mr Kwetey noted that: “The gas processing infrastructure is not a debt, it’s a massive investment. The Kwame Nkrumah Circle Interchange is not a debt, it’s a massive investment; and the Kpong water expansion project is not a debt, but a massive investment. The Tamale Airport expansion project is not a debt, it’s a massive investment. The University of Ghana’s 617-bed hospital is not a debt, the 1.5 billion-dollar Tema port facility is not a debt but a massive investment. So we can go on and on to let the NPP understand that whereas they see debt, we see only investment as Kwame Nkrumah used to see. It is unfortunate the NPP has still not awakened to understand that monies are meant to be used for the transformation of an economy; that’s what NDC does, that’s what Kwame Nkrumah did.”