Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has stated that Ghana’s debt stock is declining contrary to assertions that it is going up due to the issuing of more bonds.
The government, since it took over, has issued bonds to the tune of about 40 billion cedis in the first six months.
But responding to question from Citi FM’s Bernard Avle at the maiden edition of a Media Encounter with President Akufo-Addo, Dr. Bawumia maintained that the debt stock is rather going down due to restructuring.
“Last year the deficit was 9.4 percent of GDP that was where it ended. Thanks to the Asempa Budget it has gone back on a path of fiscal consolidation to bring back the deficit this year to 6.5 percent of GDP,” he said.
He added that “in the last 4 years, between 2012 and 2016, the debt stock went up from 45 percent of GDP to 72 percent of GDP, that means on average every year, the government was adding 6.75 percent to the debt stock.
The GDP is not 80 billion but closer to 200 billion this year, and we are going to end the year after inheriting about 72 percent of GDP, we are hoping to bring it down slightly between 70 and 71 percent”.
He explained that there was the need to restructure the debt to give government some fiscal space to undertake some programmes and project.
“So we are looking at how we manage the finances to bring down the debt burden. So even if you are borrowing, the burden of that we are trying to bring down through the process of fiscal consolidation “
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)