Vice President, Paa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur
The Vice President, Paa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur doubts the ability of a New Patriotic Party (NPP) government to correct the macro-economic stability the party claims the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government has collapsed.
According to the Vice President, the NPP’s manifesto has been silent on how to reverse the said instability.
Delivering a lecture at the University of Cape Coast(UCC) on Tuesday , he said: “For me, that is the most reckless thing I have read in quite a while and we need to be able to stop anyone who wants to damage the economy of our country in this simplistic populace way”.
He was speaking on the topic, “The challenges of economic development”. The lecture, organised by the Economics Department of the College of Humanities and Legal Studies, is a platform created from time to time to stimulate economic discussions.
It brought together management, lecturers and students of economics and politics, government functionaries and party faithful. Mr. Amissah-Arthur said the fiscal stance of the NPP as captured in their manifesto has some “populist policies” such as reduction of taxes and if implemented would cause a financial loss of GHC6.2 billion to the state.
“That is a reckless way of proceeding with national finances and someone has to stop them and we can only stop them by voting for President Mahama.”
Mr. Amissah-Arthur said the NPP’s expenditure plan was not only over-ambitious but reckless.
He added that if the NPP were asking for macro-economic stability for fiscal consolidation, they should show that the party can put the budget into a better balance than the current finance minister.
On NPP’s claim that it increased the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 459 per cent during its eight years in office , the Vice President said per calculation based on real GDP, the NPP rather achieved 56 per cent while the NDC in seven years has increased the GDP to 65 per cent.
He accused the NPP of not giving the NDC credit for the massive development it has done and had even failed to see the physical infrastructural development adding, “They pick and choose figures and compare in a bid to run down the NDC’s achievement”.
He said the country was moving towards extreme partisanship and that comments from the opposition had become selective and they spend more time criticising the government instead of making their own case.
