'What have the rating agencies said that's not true?' – Adongo challenges Akufo-Addo

The Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central is of the view that the ratings of these international rating agencies have a great deal in borrowing from developed countries.

Isaac Adongo further described President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as a dishonest man for enjoying the benefits of high financial ratings but having a problem with low ratings from the same bodies when their findings are nothing but the truth.

“You see the dishonesty, when the rating agencies were rating us high and we were going to the capital markets and showing them the rating of Ghana and collecting the $3 billion, were we in bed with them to deceive the investors? What have the rating agencies said that is not true?

“They should tell that man [Akufo-Addo] that rating is not a diplomatic manoeuvre, he should stop going around his peers and telling them stories. The rating agencies and the capital market predates his own life, and it is part of the global financial system that has come to be accepted. He has been a beneficiary of it,” Adongo said.

President Akufo-Addo during the 30th Africa Export and Import Bank annual meetings, took a swipe at rating agencies for their “reckless” downgrades of African economies during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

He noted that these downgrades have led to countries, especially Ghana being shut out of the international capital market.

“I can comfortably and convincingly say this as the AU champion for African financial institutions and leader of a country, which recently had to deal with one of the most difficult periods in his post-independence history, difficulties which were exacerbated by the reckless behaviour of rating agencies that engaged in pro-cyclical downgrades shutting Ghana out of capital markets and turning it liquidity crisis into a solvency crisis.

“The country which had become the favourite child of bondholders, and had successfully gone to market at the height of the pre-Covid downturn was suddenly shut out of international capital markets,” Akufo-Addo said during his speech at the 30th annual meetings of Afreximbank.

ABJ/WA