A video of the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia discounting the importance of single-digit inflation in the year 2012, has resurfaced and gone viral.

It comes on the back of the 2020 budget presentation in which the government cited single-digit inflation as one of its achievements. 

“As a result of us introducing the necessary combination of focus, discipline, integrity, creativity, compassion and competence, in just 32 months in office, Mr. Speaker, the Lord has blessed our efforts. The economy has seen miraculous turnaround, moving now in the right direction,” Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta told Parliament Wednesday. 

Pointing to the gains he said, “Inflation rate has fallen from 15.4 per cent in December 2016 to 7.6 per cent (new series) in September 2019, registering the lowest rate in 27years; which makes 2019 the year with the slowest ever rise in the prices of goods and service in Ghana in the entire history of the Fourth Republic.”

What the Vice President said in 2012

The NPP vice-presidential candidate indicated on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana programme that, the single-digit inflation touted by the government at the time led by John Mahama, was questionable.

Admitting that many countries all over the world are finding it “difficult” to bring inflation to a single digit, Ghana’s single digit, he said, leaves much to be desired, explaining that Ghanaians are yet to experience the goodies that come with it.

Dr Bawumia, a former Deputy Governor of Bank of Ghana, said single-digit inflation comes with, but not limited to: low interest rate, low cost of doing business, job creation and low cost of living.

However, in the case of Ghana, he maintained that “what has been achieved is not consistent with the development we have seen in the cost of living” – food prices have gone up in the market centres, he claimed.

Dr Bawumia who said he was part of a team at the central bank that worked towards single-digit inflation, was asked by the host, categorically, whether the government had achieved single-digit inflation.

The affable and calm-looking opposition vice-presidential candidate at the time, responded, albeit not forthright, “that is for everybody to judge”.

But he insisted that whatever had been achieved by the government did not seem to reflect in the cost of living.