Former National Chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC) Bernard Mornah has accused the president of feeding on lies such as the impact of the downgrades on the local economy by credit rating agencies.
Mr Mornah said the economic challenges were all visible for all to see.
It is recalled that President Akufo-Addo 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 on the Big Issue on TV3 while contributing to a discussion on the state of the economy.