NDC did not over-spend in 2016 - Bagbin

Mr Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament, has warned the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Government that Ghanaians have become too enlightened to be deceived.

“For example, the NPP Government, after promising from opposition that they will transform Ghana in 18 months, have now turned around to invite the NDC whose Government they bastardized and called incompetent, to join them to reason together for solutions to the depreciation of the cedi.

“They think they are smart; after failing to deliver, they want to trick the NDC into a supposed collaboration so that at the end of the day, when their failure is complete, they can turn around and say, we invited the NDC to come on board and help and so the failure is the failure of the NDC too”.

The Nadowli-Kaleo MP said this in a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency to react to some recent happenings in governance.

“The sudden invitation to the NDC has shocked many because the NPP is known to ride the common boast that they have the men and Observers are particularly shocked that when the NDC was in power and invited the NPP to a national dialogue on the Economy at Senchi, they refused to attend.

“The reason why the NPP is now inviting us, to help them think up solutions for the depreciation of the cedi is that they want to cleverly rope us into their failure. But they have failed already,” Mr Bagbin added.

He said Ghanaians were aware that the cedi was performing far better in 2016 when the NDC left power. Indeed, by December 2016, the cedi had been trading at GH¢4.20 to the dollar and was strengthening against the American currency.

“However, in just two years that the NPP has been in power, the cedi has slipped to almost GH¢6.00 to a dollar, only making marginal gains after the government announced intent to pump almost a billion dollars into the money market.

Mr Bagbin said, the Finances Minister’s recent blame of Ghana’s delayed exit from the International Monetary Fund Programme on the NDC’s supposed reckless spending in 2016, was not true. “How could we have overspent in 2016, when we were already under the IMF programme?”.

He said, the NPP thought they could get away with heaping lies on the NDC from opposition, but Ghanaians were seeing who the real incompetent people were and nothing would change the facts.

“Where are the 275 factories, they said they will build; The Economy they said they will build better, is now wobbling. Our cedi is depreciating the currency, and now you want to cleverly share the shame with NDC by inviting us for a bi-partisan conference on the cedi.,” the Nadowli Kaleo MP said.