Sammy Gyamfi is Comms Director of NDC
The National Communications Officer of the NDC, Sammy Gyamfi, disagreed with the IMF when it claimed that Ghana's economic crisis was due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said the country was already in bad shape before the onset of the pandemic.
"How can any objective mind blame the alarming depression of the cedi on COVID-19 when we know that the main reason for the alarming depreciation in the cedi is the huge capital fight from our country?" he asked.
Read the full story originally published on September 21, 2022 by GhanaWeb
The National Communications Officer of the NDC, Sammy Gyamfi, has rejected assertions by the IMF and the government that the current hardship in the country is a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to him, Ghana's economy was already going down the drain before COVID-19, with the country's currency depreciating by almost 13 percent in 2019 because of the bad management of the country's Economic Management Team, which Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia leads.
Speaking in a Joy News interview monitored by GhanaWeb, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) communicator added that the COVID-19 pandemic rather helped stabilise the Ghana Cedi because of the reduction in imports and thus the demand for dollars.
"How can any objective mind blame the alarming depression of the cedi on COVID-19 when we know that the main reason for the alarming depreciation in the cedi is the huge capital fight from our country?
"Investors are pulling out their monies. Why are they pulling out? It is because our debt position is no longer sustainable. That is why we have been downgraded by all the sovereign credit rating agencies … to junk status; our economy is now a 'borla' economy.
"In 2019, the cedi had depreciated by 12.9 percent; that was before COVID. In 2016 if you want to use the Mahama era as a benchmark, the cedi depreciated by 9.6 percent, but even before COVID, we were doing depreciation of almost 13 percent.
"COVID rather helped the situation because it reduced demand for dollars in 2020, so you realise that the cedi was relatively stronger in 2020 and in 2021. Immediately that fizzled out, we saw the cedi depreciating again, and as we speak, the cedi has depreciated by over 30 percent for this year 2022 alone," he said.
He added that the country was so broke before COVID-19 that it could not raise $100 billion to start its fight against COVID-19 when the pandemic reached the shores of Ghana.
The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, stated that contrary to the narrative by some opposition elements, Ghana's economic challenges are not because of the bad policies of the Akufo-Addo administration.
"We have started very constructive discussions already, and to the people of Ghana, like everybody on this planet, you have been hurt by exogenous shocks," she said.
She mentioned the extraneous factors which have contributed to Ghana's economic woes leading to the West African country seeking a programme from the IMF.
"First the pandemic, then Russia's war in Ukraine. We need to realise that it is not because of bad policies in the country but because of this combination of shocks, and, therefore, we have to support Ghana," she said.
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