Seth Terkper, a minister of finance in the Mahama government, says Ghana expected more from the vice-president’s address on the economy on Thursday (7 April 2022).
Terkper said Dr Bawumia’s presentation at a TESCON event in Kasoa was an anticlimax.
He said the habit of talking about costs “without talking about the nuisance taxes that should have gone [which is the sacrifice that Ghanaians are making] is unfair to the people of Ghana, because ESLA [Energy Sector Levy Act] levies have been increased twice”.
Speaking with Kwaku Nhyira-Addo on The Asaase Breakfast Show on Friday (8 April 2022), the former finance minister said: “I’m saying that we’re missing the opportunity to attend to the next crisis through the stabilisation as a result of the arithmetic – if you like, the financial engineering – that is currently taking place.”
Goodbye to bullish boasts
He added that, for the first time, “We have seen less bullishness. The Finance Minister has acknowledged that the country is going through a crisis. The president has also acknowledged that we’re going through a crisis.
“We heard that from the vice-president but, as the head of the economic management team, he was to give us more than even the Finance Minister or the president …
“When we had the Single Spine [Salary Structure, introduced in 2010], the abrupt gas shortage from Nigeria which gave us the power crisis [in 2015 under the previous government]; when we had all of those things, my boss [President John Dramani Mahama] acknowledged it and I went to Parliament to tell the country what we were going to do with it under his [Mahama’s] direction, so that was what we expected,” Terkper said.
“So, if the vice-president was mounting the stage, for heaven’s sake [for five years] of managing the economy, you go back to 2016 to do comparisons? We expected an address to the nation, not to a partisan group … the speech itself should have been more reflective.”
“We expected more and the presentation was just an anticlimax,” Terkper said.
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