President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s criticism of the credit rating agencies should be founded on facts, Dean of the Business School of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Professor John Gatsi, has said.
Prof Gatsi says he sees no merit in President Akufo-Addo’s criticism of the agencies because the struggles of Ghana’s economy are known by everyone.
President Akufo-Addo had described the downgrade 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.”
Reacting to this on the Ghana Tonight show on TV3 Monday, June 19, Prof Gatsi said “I don’t see any merit in the criticism, the criticism should be founded on facts and meticulous work that has been independently done but we have not done any independent assessment.
“We all do know that our economy is in trouble and we all do know that our credit has deteriorated over time and that has warranted the downgrade by the credit rating agencies.”