Minister in charge of Government Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, has said President John Mahama assumed office under the most severe economic conditions Ghana has ever experienced, blaming years of mismanagement under the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Speaking on JoyFM’s Super Morning Show on Wednesday, December 31, Mr Ofosu said that the NPP’s inability to service Ghana’s debts was a direct consequence of economic mismanagement.

"So you can say that President Mahama inherited the worst possible economic situation in Ghana's history, and that was superintended by the NPP.

"They could not pay our debts because they mismanaged the economy and simply did not have the money to pay our debts,” he said.

Mr Ofosu said the scale of economic decline confronting the new administration was evident even before the 2024 general elections.

According to him, the economy had deteriorated to a point where debt defaults between 2022 and 2023 signalled a complete breakdown in fiscal management, an occurrence he described as unprecedented in recent decades.

“The moment a country fails to pay its debts, you know the economy is in complete shambles. In the last 40 years or so, nothing of that sort had happened,” he said.

The Abura Asebu-Kwamankese MP argued that beyond the economy, several other critical sectors were equally strained.

He pointed to deep-rooted challenges in the energy sector, as well as persistent difficulties in education, health, and other social services, which he said had been mismanaged for years.

Infrastructure, particularly roads and other essential public facilities, was also cited as a major concern, with widespread public complaints reflecting years of neglect.

He stressed that any fair assessment of President Mahama’s performance must be grounded in the context of the economic and structural realities he inherited.

“For many years, the system was run in a way that created more problems for the Ghanaian people,” he said, adding that the debt crisis alone was enough to describe the inherited situation as the worst in the nation’s history.