Kwame Jantuah, a leading member of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), has held former Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta accountable for a substantial portion of the GHS742 billion public debt stock accumulated through his borrowings while in office.
Jantuah argues that Ofori-Atta should be required to account for how these borrowed funds were utilized.
“Now that Ofori-Atta is no longer the Finance Minister, he is available to answer questions. The media should interview him about the debt,” Jantuah stated.
“They have to explain how the borrowing benefited us, what have the loans been used for? I am not saying they haven’t done anything, they could have done more than what they have done,” Jantuah said on the Big Issue on TV3 Friday, July 27 while commenting on Ghana’s public stock which stood at GH¢742 billion, representing US$50.9 billion as of June 2024, according to the Finance Minister Dr Mohammed Amin Adam.
During the mid-year budget review presentation on Tuesday, July 24, the Finance Minister stated that the debt stock represents 70.6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“The stock consists of external debt of GH¢452.0 billion and domestic debt of GH¢290.0 billion, representing 60.9 percent and 39.1 percent of the total debt stock, respectively. As a percentage of GDP, external and domestic debt represented 43.0 percent and 27.6 percent, respectively. This indicates an increase of 22 percent due to the effect of the cedi depreciation and continuous disbursements from creditors,” he said.
“In effect, Mr. Speaker, we are living within our means. Indeed, consistent with our programme with the IMF, we are on course to achieving a primary surplus of 0.5 percent of GDP by end of the year.
“We have successfully concluded the second review of our Extended Credit Facility with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which led to the disbursement of the 3rd tranche of 360 million US Dollars, bringing total disbursement to about US$1.6 billion; We have completed the Debt Restructuring programme with the Official Creditor Committee (OCC), covering US$5.1 billion dollars resulting in approximately 2.8 billion US Dollars of debt relief. This means that we will not service our debt to our official creditors from 2023 to 2026;
