Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has been compelled by vile propaganda directed at him to fire a salvo at the opposition and minority National Democratic Congress (NDC).
It follows claim by the deputy minority leader, James Klutse Avedzi, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ketu North Constituency in the Volta Region, to the effect that the vice president had made a sudden U-turn on his position of the issue of borrowing.
According to him, Dr Bawumia had said during the electioneering campaign last year that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) would not borrow when it came to power.
Mr Avedzi accused the Veep of making a U-turn on the issue of borrowing, insisting that Dr. Bawumia had condemned the NDC government for borrowing but had said the NPP government is also going to borrow for development.
“The vice president… while he was the running mate for the NPP, was emphatic on the issue about borrowing in Ghana, saying that the country needs not borrow and that we have the resources here in Ghana and that when they win power they will not borrow,” Avedzi was quoted as having said on Accra-based Citi FM.
According to Dr. Bawumia, he had never mounted any platform to condemn government’s borrowing but rather spoke against excessive borrowing by the then Mahama-led NDC government which did not yield meaningful dividends for the country, but plunged Ghana into a debt crisis.
Unbridled borrowing by Mahama’s NDC government left a colossal debt for the NPP administration to the tune of over GH¢123 billion in just eight years from the GH¢9 billion it inherited in 2009.
In the 2017 budget about GH¢14 billion has been earmarked to service debt, leaving no space for spending on development projects.
A statement issued from the Flagstaff House and signed by the Director of Communications at the office of the vice president, Frank Agyei-Twum, said, “The Office of the Vice President would like to state for the record that the above statement attributed to the Vice-President by the deputy minority leader (and subsequently by many NDC communicators) is a complete and utter fabrication.”
Source: dailyguideafrica.com