Economic crisis: NPP must be booted out - Jinapor to Ghanaians

Ranking Member on Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee, John Jinapor, has called on Ghanaians to vote out the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2024 general elections.

He cited the soaring inflation, high cost of living, payment of numerous taxes in the country, especially at the ports as some reasons the current government must be changed.

Speaking on Citi FM’s Eyewitness news and monitored by GhanaWeb Business, John Jinapor stressed that this government has overstayed their welcome and Ghanaians are suffering due to some bad decisions they took.

He said, “Last year's inflation was about 40 percent and this year's inflation is about 30 percent. That is year on year. So imagine if last year inflation was 40 something percent and this year is 30 something percent, you are worse off and yet, he says he will pay your coupon rate of 5 percent, look, this government has overstayed their welcome. We just have no choice but to tolerate them for another year. We must boot them out.”

Ghana’s economy took a downturn after the country was hit by the coronavirus pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war.

According to the government, measures have been put in place to stabilize the wobbling economy.

As part of efforts for government to meet the conditions required for the IMF loan, government introduced a domestic debt exchange programme.

The programme is aimed at restoring its capacity to service its high-rising debt.

Under this programme, all domestic bondholders were charged to exchange their instruments for new ones.

Existing domestic bonds as of December 1, 2022, were exchanged for a set of four new bonds maturing in 2027, 2029, and 2037.

The annual coupons on all of these bonds were set at 0% in 2023, 5% in 2024 and 10% from 2025 until maturity.

Meanwhile, Ghana’s public debt stock stands at GH¢575.7billion, a report by the Bank of Ghana has shown.

This amount represents 93.5 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product.

ESA/NOQ