![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Paul-Adom-Otchere-Copy-696x464.jpg\" "\\"Paul-Adom-Otchere")
<\/div>\nDear Paul,<\/p>\n
You know l\u2019m a huge fan of your Good Evening Ghana program. I enjoyed tonight\u2019s show, and we exchanged notes on your intro on how South Africa freed itself from the dehumanising apartheid government.<\/p>\n
However, I couldn\u2019t help but try to straighten the twisted narrative about the dexterity of the NPP government in managing economic and government affairs in the last 8 years.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You pitched your narrative against the NDC\u2019s candidate, JM\u2019s caution, for all to be measured in their demands of his potential government in 2025.<\/p>\n
l think you should cut JM some slack when he says labour should hasten slowly in making\u00a0 demands in 2025 should he be president given the understandably precarious nature of our finances- with a debt iceberg necessitating a debt exchange program,whose reach is far more pernicious to the state\u2019s finances and personal savings ( e.g. stressful near the pick pocketing of our investments through bad haircuts) than what the NDC left us in 2016.<\/p>\n
Besides, all the things you mentioned Nana Addo did from 2017 to 2018 were mostly the results of NDC\u2019s investments plus lMF funds and policy discipline. it was no master stroke of the NPP that it inherited\/achieved a 7% growth in 2017 from 3.4% in 2016. I would even add some of the growth in 2018 was largely owed in part to NDC\u2019s investments- if for nothing at all the NDC ended dumsor in 2016 and made investment in sound policy\u00a0 management of energy resources e.g. ESLA Act 2015 and the Cash Waterfall Mechanism.<\/p>\n
The reason we were in such calamitous mess from 2021 until we ran to the IMF in an ambulance against the government\u2019s will, was due to excessive abuse of procurement-inspired and highly inflated projects without clear value addition to the economy,\u00a0 save perhaps free SHS from 2018 to 2020. (E.g. IPEP, EC\u2019s inflated procurement of unnecessary biometric machines, fake and costly telecom revenue assurance systems). For a period of time, nearly 85% of projects procured were not going through the government\u2019s own GIFMIS system.<\/p>\n
Of course the premature 2019 exit from the 2015 IMF program based on unrealistic promises of fiscal discipline, a million barrels of oil, an integrated aluminium industry and an accountable and a reformed public sector.( the only real work the Senior Minister\u2019s office ever did was to edit the public sector reform paper handed over to the government by the NDC- and yet that office until it was scrapped was the source of waste which when challenged by the then Auditor General,\u00a0 would lead to his autocratic removal from office).<\/p>\n
Only 4 out of 11 structural benchmarks the government committed to in the IMF program were attained\u00a0 by the time it exited the\u00a0 program\u2013and then covid-19 exposed the vaunted hollowness of the hitherto solid economy touted.<\/p>\n
The office of government machinery, for instance, became the hub for waste on a vast number of non-essential staff and projects. Imagine that even in 2024 when the government struggled to convince our creditors to extend repayment of our odious debt in order to get just $600m from the IMF the office of Government Machinery has seen its budget ballooned by 100%.<\/p>\n
The 2024 budget is dishing out uneconomic tax exemptions of 12.5bn Cedis to what many see as politically favoured companies with no real value addition to the economy, while aiming to raise 11bn Cedis in taxes. And oh about that, we have lost count of the taxes and levies this government has imposed on businesses and households.<\/p>\n
Yesterday l listened to a Deloite Ghana sponsored program.<\/p>\n
\u201c2024 Tax and Regulatory Outlook\u201d to make sense of taxes and regulations in 2024, and the expert speakers were even worried and confused sometimes on the far-reaching wreck-happy impact of these octopus-like taxes on businesses and households.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Certainly, these\u00a0 can\u2019t\u00a0 move us \u201cfrom taxation to production\u201d!<\/p>\n
Any political party that takes over the reins of government in 2025.has quite a ride to take us through and yet should it be any other apart from the NPP, it would unfortunately inherit the humongous debt this government has cleverly postponed to 2026 and onwards with punitive sanctions if a government fails to honour obligations due.<\/p>\n
And yes, all of this should tame politicians in this silly season of elections not to make high octane spinning promises they can\u2019t keep.\u00a0 IMANI will, as we have always done since 2008 through our IMANIFESTO project, make sure we don\u2019t entertain such!<\/p>\n
Franklin Cudjoe<\/p>\n
Lolobi-Kumasi (SALL in Hell)<\/p>\n
January 25, 2024<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n