The Minority Leader, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, says the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia government has taken an unenviable place in Ghanaian history for being the government that signed up the people of Ghana to the worst form of an IMF programme.

Dr Ato Forson says “Ghanaians must clearly understand that it is not the IMF which imposed these horrible conditionalities and austerity on them” but “rather the government of President Akufo-Addo and the economic mismanagement team, led by Alhaji Bawumia, imposed them on the Ghanaian people”.

The Minority Leader made the point when he presented the Minority’s response to the 2023 mid-year budget review in Parliament on Wednesday, August 2. 

Dr Ato Forson said Ghana’s current IMF programme is the first and only one in the history of the country to have come with debt restructuring. 

”This debt restructuring programme has impoverished the rich, the middle class and, to a large extent, the poor”, he added.

The Minority Leader said “this same debt restructuring has rendered our banking and financial institutions insolvent and bankrupt”, adding “almost all our banks, non-bank financial institutions and insurance companies declared huge losses in 2022 as a result of government’s recklessness and mismanagement which resulted in this debt restructuring.”

Dr Ato Forson said Ghana “is in distress, our people are in despair and most Ghanaians have lost hope in this incompetent NPP administration”.

He lambasted the government for imposing avoidable hardships on the people of Ghana.

“All the hardships we are seeing and experiencing were avoidable. These hardships are needless”, the Minority Leader pointed out.