NDC to sue NPP gov't if it approves loan

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Monday threatened to take legal action against the government if parliament approved eight-trillion cedis loan transaction with International Finance Consortium (IFC), a US based company.

Dr Josiah Aryeh, General Secretary of the party declared the party's stand when he answered questions from the press in Accra, when he called the loan as an international fraud designed to dupe Ghanaians, at a press conference.

He said: "we in the NDC were surprised to learn that the government had entered into a loan agreement of eight-trillion cedis which turn out to be among the '419 scam' and we will not hesitate to take legal action against it if it goes ahead to approve it in parliament".

According to him the NDC was always fighting and would continue to fight for the interest of the people and that the party would do evil to Ghanaians if it watched ?certain fraudulent things by government unconcerned?.

Dr. Aryeh said the government's zero tolerance for corruption would not materialise if it was involved in fraudulent acts that would rip the country of a lot of resources in the already HIPC situation. "If government imprison people because of financial loss to the state and it is also causing financial losses, then those who are involved have to also be brought to book," he stressed.

He said the supreme interest of the nation could not be fought by parliament alone, hence the prompt action by the party to sound the "correction bell" for government to rescind its decision of contracting such a loan, which he described as "dubious."

The General Secretary alleged that government did not take any feasibility study before entering the agreement adding, the "government has no business plans for the country". He said, recently the President, John Agyekum Kufuor and the Finance Minister, Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo made two contradictory statements at separate occasions and wondered who was telling the truth about Ghana's economic situation for the past 17 months.

Dr. Aryeh said the President said in May this year that there were positive showings that the government was on the right path while the Finance Minister said on 4 July that the economic situation of the country was fragile.