JINAPOR: Bawumia peddled falsehood

Member of Parliament for Yapei-Kusawgu constituency in the Savanna Region, John Abdulai Jinapor says Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s presentation on the state of the economy was full of falsehood and misconception which could not  point out the current economic hardship facing the citizenry.

His narration comes after the Vice President presented an address at a Training and Orientation Conference organized by the Tertiary Students Confederacy (TESCON) of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Central Region last Thursday.

The Vice President’s two-hour speech focused mainly on the current macroeconomic indicators of the country and what the government has been doing so far.

According to Jinapor, Dr. Bawumia’s speech provided a political campaign message instead of honestly sharing with Ghanaians the economic outlook.

“What we are talking about is simple; we are in a very difficult situation, fuel price have gone up by 70 percent this year. Today, our fuel is the most expensive among 33 African countries, transport fares have gone up by 15 percent, next week, there are indications there’ll be another increment. If you pay 17 billion, it’ll show in the budget. Show us where such provisions were made for the 17 billion excess capacity mentioned by the Vice President. What Bawumia did was purely falsehood. He didn’t speak to facts.

“Now what is excess capacity, we’re talking about power we haven’t consumed but paying for. If he’s saying we didn’t consume power worth 17 billion but paid for it, ECG 2020 audited account shows the power they bought as 9.37 billion – that’s power purchased. In the previous year, it was the same amount, 6.8 billion which was paid by government which is indicated in their financial statement. We are talking about power consumed but because of the poor state of ECG, because their loses have run up by 30 percent, when they buy the power and sell, they’re unable to pay so the Finance Minister comes in and pays for that amount bought then Dr. Bawumia holds a press conference and says it is excess capacity.

“That’s most unbecoming of a Vice President. It’s so unfortunate for the Vice President to reduce himself to that level. What you’re paying for is power consumed not excess capacity. This so called excess capacity is nothing but power we’ve consumed” he told Samson Lardy Anyenini on Newsfile.

Blame Game

Jinapor, a  former Deputy Minister of Energy further advised the Vice President who doubles as the Chairman of the Economic Management Team to shift focus from the usual blame game to score political points and provide solutions to make the living condition of the Ghanaian citizens which to him have become unbearable a better one.

“The Vice President is the most disappointing. He says that COVID, and the Ukraine war are the causes of the problems we’re facing now. Let’s read the Bank of Ghana own financial statistics. COVID affected the whole world, Togo, Nigeria and everywhere, meanwhile the Ghanaian cedi is the worst performing currency as posted by Bloomberg. So how does COVID affect only our economy? How does COVIDchose only Ghana and said we’ll affect only your currency? It doesn’t make economic sense. And he[Dr. Bawumia] was bold enough to look into our eyes and tell us the cedi is depreciating because of COVID. He should provide solutions than telling us what caused what, what caused that. Ghanaians are not in normal times, they need better solutions to better their lives”.