In
a quick riposte to media reports that the ruling NDC government
seemingly wasted $ 5 billion to finance its campaign during the 2012
general elections, Fifi Fiavi Franklin Kwetey has sought to set the
record straight in order to defuse the controversy over the claims.
A
publication by The Chronicle newspaper on Tuesday, July 16, 2013
revealed that the incumbent government blown such whopping sums ‘buying
votes of hapless Ghanaians.’
According to the Bank of Ghana,
government ran into a deficit of GHC 8.7 billion, equivalent to US $5
billion, in public finance in 2012, ‘amounting to 12.1 % of Gross
Domestic Product, using the rebased GDP members. That huge expenditure
is referred to by contemporary economic historians as the highest
recorded in the Politico-economic history of this country.”
Fifi
Kwetey, Minister of State in charge of Allied and Financial
Institutions, was quoted to have said on Joy FM’s ‘News file’ that the
controversial GHC 8.7 billion excess expenditure in 2012 incurred by the
government under the leadership of President John Dramani Mahama was
because government had to do whatever was necessary to clinch victory in
an election year.
“We (NDC Government) needed to do what we
needed to do politically…some of them…not to raise taxes on petroleum
prices in an election year,” he was quoted.
But speaking on Oman
FM on Tuesday, Fifi Kwetey explained that the money in question was used
to remit Ghana’s huge deficit. According to him, it was used to settle
some wages in the public sector and provide subsidies on utility and
fuel including other domestic requirements which cost over GHC 6
billion.
He debunked the claims in the publication, insisting
that government did not use the money to finance its campaign strategy
in the elections last year, but rather used it to “better the lives” of
the people.
He was also very critical of the Ghanaian mentality
that ‘everything must be affordable’ and so, admonished the nation to
bury such mindset and face the reality. |
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