Ghana’s Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has been described as skilled at borrowing but inept at spending by an economist.
“Our Finance Minister is a master borrower but a complete failure when it comes to spending the money he borrows,” he remarked.
On Wednesday, February 9, 2022, Mr. Yaw Mordy said this in an interview on Accra 100.5 FM’s mid-day news.
“As a lecturer, I will always give the Minister an eight out of ten when it comes to borrowing, but zero when it comes to his spending habit,” he stated emphatically.
Economic management, he added, is how the government earns money to spend rather than borrowing to spend.
He explained that this has to do with absolute and relative metrics in economic management.
The Finance Minister under this government has borrowed way in excess of 73 percent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Mr. Mordy added that because of the levels of borrowing, the government has reduced some of these expenditure levels to GDP just to make the books look good but to no avail.
In the past five years, he noted that Ghana has become the leading country in West Africa to have borrowed to this high level.
He kicked against the option of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a panacea to the challenges facing the country’s economy.
He said the IMF concept is a colonial mentality that must be avoided.
He advised the government to cut down the number of appointees at the Jubilee House as well as cut tax rebates to many of the foreign companies in the Free Zones enclave.
He further called for redefining of the tax reports to raise enough revenue.
