As many Ghanaians are wailing over the various taxes imposed by President Mahama’s government, Member of Parliament for Techiman South on the ticket of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) has responded that the era of begging for money to build infrastructure which are catalysts to development in the country should be a thing of the past since the country is no longer under the bondage of Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC).
Pontificating on the economic status of the country, Hon. Agyei Mensah averred that Ghanaians are not psychologically prepared to accept the fact that the country has reached the middle-income status; adding that “the world now sees the country as matured, which is now capable of standing on its economic pillars.”
He however urged Ghanaians to wake up from their slumber and live up to the economic status which comes with the current economic situation the country is experiencing due to the reality that there are no more soft loans or grants for middle-income status countries, but rather high interest rate ones.
“...at first, we used to have easy loans and grants but now the foreign donors see Ghana in the middle-income status. This has made it difficult to have access to soft loans without high interest rate; so now you and I have to look within the country to generate our own funds to develop the country; hence this 2014 budget,” he pointed out.
To him, “it does not make any economic sense to borrow money for infrastructure today and use our assets to pay huge interest rates in the near future.”
Touching on the contents of the 2014 Budget, the NDC MP stated that the budget reveals it is high time Ghanaians do away with subsidy in their vocabularies and accept to pay utility tariffs in full.
“…the only way to resolve the huge economic deficit in the country is to generate funds internally,” he added.
