Former National Chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC) Bernard Mornah has said that he would not put too much blame on the Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta for the economic challenges because he did not appoint himself into office.
He heaped the blame at the doorstep of the appointor, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for failing to act to ensure that the appointees deliver.
Contributing to a discussion on the state of the economy on the Big Issue on TV3 Tuesday, July 11, Mr Mornah said “I can’t blame Ofori-Atta that much because he did not appoint himself, I blame the president.”
He further accused the president of feeding on lies such as the impact of the downgrades on the local economy by credit rating agencies.
It is recalled that Akufo-Addo has described the downgrade of Ghana by credit rating agencies as reckless.
He said the downgrades exacerbated the challenges in African countries including Ghana.
Fitch Ratings, for instance, in April this year downgraded Ghana’s Long-Term Local-Currency (LTLC) Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘RD’ from ‘CCC’.
President Akufo-Addo said at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Afreximbank on Sunday, June 18 that “the AU champion for African financial institutions and leader of a country that recently had to deal with one of the most difficult periods in his post-independent history, difficulties that were exacerbated by the reckless behaviour of rating agencies that engaged in pro-cyclical downgrades that shut Ghana out of the capital market and turned a liquidity crisis into a solvency crisis.”
But Bernard Mornah said the agencies gave Ghana positive ratings when the economy was doing well therefore it cannot be wrong if they are giving negative ratings presently.
“One of the lies is to blame the rating agencies for the economic challenges, clearly, we are in a crisis,” he said.