NDC’s early campaign strategy may hurt economy – Economist warns

An Economist, who lectures at the Kumasi Polytechnic, Kusi Boafo, has warned that Ghana’s economy may further dip if those managing it loses focus and rather concentrate on winning the next general elections.

According to Boafo, all indicators attest to the fact that the economy is getting worse as each day passed by but was quick to attribute the situation to the early campaign strategy adopted by the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).

For instance, he said while the ruling party is spending huge sums of money advertising its achievement, it is burdened with accumulated arrears to the tune of GHc13.7 billion which is largely attributed to unpaid National Health Insurance fees, District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF), GETFund, Pensions, SSNIT contributions among others.

To him, it was economically unwise for the NDC to have started its campaign in the first quarter of the election year because “once you do that, you are likely to lose concentration” on managing the economy.

“They have started too early. Left to me alone, they should have waited for a while because if you start within the first three months in an election and bring a green book called accounting to the people and advertising and getting chiefs to pledge the percentage of votes they will secure for the party, it is too early”.

“What it means is that we may pay little attention to the economic management of the country, and the concentration will rather be on campaigning. If we are not careful, we are going to spend huge sums of money, and it will negatively affect the economy because all the things we will be doing will be centered on scoring political points”, he said in an interview on Accra-based Okay FM on Thursday.

Boafo further said all the major political parties, except the weaker ones, have all started campaigning in one way or the other, insisting that such a move is not the best for an economy which is already “suffering.”

“This is hurting, and I think we should rather focus on healing the economy. We are watching”, he bemoaned.