NDC presidential candidate, John Mahama, says Ghana’s economy is on ventilators barely a month after impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The former president, speaking in a live telecast on Thursday, said the Akufo-Addo administration has used propaganda to sell the economy and the current crisis is now exposing them.

“They said the economy has been the best that we have ever had since independence,” Mahama recounted.

He added: a leading member of this government told us the economy was so robust…that for three months if anything happens to us, we would be able to survive.”

“We have not been able to survive even one month,” the ex-president jabbed, adding “if we didn’t run to the IMF for the $1billion rapid credit facility, it is possible that in the next two months probably, salaries would not have been paid.”

He said the economy “is on ventilators and it needs thinking to rescue it from the ICU.”

Proffering a way forward, Mahama says when building an economy, it is prudent to have “enough buffers and create fiscal space so that when you are faced with a shock or adversity, you are easily able to overcome it.”

Cut frivolous spending

In the short term, he said President Akufo-Addo must cut “frivolous expenditure” to create more revenue.

He said one way of doing so is to reduce his government’s size of over 120 Ministers.

The public service, Mahama said, “is over-bloated especially political appointees.”

He added, this is the time for the president to look at the number of his Ministers and make the necessary sacrifice.

You cannot have appointees running around and drawing free fuel and have 125 Ministers and ask the people to sacrifice, Mahama noted.