The renowned economist, Dr Kwame Pianim, has revealed that he advised President Akufo-Addo on the controversial Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDE).

Dr Pianim said his advice, together with that of seasoned experts, shared with the President was not even acknowledged not to talk of its application.

According to the renowned economist, they did not want the DDEP to be implemented due to financial sector clean up which also affected the banks badly.

In his view, the banks have not recovered from the exercise and that adding the DDEP was only going to add up to their woes.

"I put together Dr Paul Acquah, myself, Ishmael Yamson, Sam Jonah, Ernest Aryitey from Bank of Ghana, Frank Adu, Mawuli Ababio, and Togbe Afede, we sat for four days and crafted a memorandum which I sent to the president, copied the Vice President and the Finance Minister that this is the wrong way to go, we just finished cleaning up the banking sector so it doesn’t make sense to give a haircut to the banks to impair their capital adequacy ratio, some of them made the banks insolvent,” he told Accra-based TV3.

• DDEP: We are committed to honouring payment obligations – Finance Ministry

“But we were ignored completely, I am one of the founding members of the NPP so if I could not get the ear, how do you expect the technician to get the ear of the president?" he quizzed.

Background

Following an economic downturn and difficulties in servicing its debt, the government implemented the domestic debt exchange programme to give itself more time to meet its fiscal obligations.

However, the programme upon its announcement faced stiff opposition from groups and individuals. 

Without the debt exchange programme, the government warned that the nation’s economy would collapse.

Following this, the government successfully restructured some of its domestic debts achieving over 85% voluntary participation by bondholders.