The opposition New Patriotic Party has scored President John Mills F, for his management of the economy.
\nThe Minority in Parliament at a press conference Wednesday, catalogued a litany issues they say point to the fact that the Mills government had mismanaged the economy.
\n\u201cIn 2010, the government targeted a real GDP growth of 6.5 per cent, the actual attained growth was 5.9 per cent \u2013 a missed target. With respect to sectoral growth rates, agricultural sector was targeted to grow at 6%, industry at 6.6% and the services sector at 6.8%. The provisional growth rates achieved are reported to be 4.8%, 7% and 6.1% for agriculture, industry and services sector respectively. In other words, for the sectoral targeted growth rates, two out of three targets were missed,\u201d Prof. George Gyan Baffour said.
\nHe said the government\u2019s abysmal performance was not limited to last year as the same poor results were obtained in 2009.
\nThe former Deputy Finance minister said the government had missed its inflation targets for the year and that the 2011 budget clearly showed that \u201cthe management of the economy suffered a major setback in 2010.\u201d
\nHe accused the government of under-declaring its expenditure citing the case in which \u201cthe budget did not account for over GH\u00a2300 million in payments on arrears including judgement debt that were made in 2010.\u201d
\nThe Minority also accuse the government of accumulating significant arrears in 2010. \u201cThe government has accumulated domestic payment (that is payment for work done) to the tune of some GH\u00a23.2 billion or over 12% of GDP, including arrears on single spine salary structure of between GH\u00a2600 million and GH\u00a21.1 billion), new commitments of some GH\u00a21 billion, GETFund, District Assembly Common Fund, NHIS, SSNIT pensions, etc.\u201d
\nThe Minority also took issues with what they called the government\u2019s double standards and deliberate misinformation for political purposes. Prof. Baffour said while the government told the IMF in the second quarter of 2010 that the stock of arrears for 2008 was GH\u00a21.1 billion, the Finance Minister, Dr Kwabena Duffuor said in Parliament that the government inherited arrears amounting to GH\u00a21,801.56 million. \u201cSo what is the arrears? GH\u00a21.1 billion or GH\u00a21.8 billion? He asked.
\nThe Minority said the GH\u00a23.9 billion Gross International Reserves being boasted about by government was phantom because that amount came about as a result of the government\u2019s failure to pay its bills. \u201cAs a result of the huge arrears, public debt in 2010 is increasing at a rapid pace and rose from $8 billion in December 2008 to over $11 billion as of September 2010, representing over 68% of GDP,\u201d the NPP Minority said, stating the public debt stood at $7.5 billion in 2000.
\nProf. Baffour said the NDC government had added more to the public debt in 2 years, than the NPP did in eight years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The opposition New Patriotic Party has scored President John Mills F, for his management of the economy. The Minority in Parliament at a press conference Wednesday, catalogued a litany issues they say point to the fact that the Mills government had mismanaged the economy. \u201cIn 2010, the government targeted a real GDP growth of 6.5 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n