Otabil 'sinking ship' comment investment killer - Minister

A deputy Interior Minister in Ghana has said the description of the country as a sinking ship by one of its renowned preachers, risks undermining the major gold-producer’s recent forays to the International Monetary Fund for a programme to inspire confidence in the West African country’s economy.

James Agalga said Saturday that Dr Mensa Otabil’s likening of Ghana to the sunken RMS Titanic of 1912, bodes ill consequences for investor confidence in the West African country.

Ghana has written to the Bretton Wood Institution to help rescue her ailing economy.

The country’s local currency, the Cedi, has fallen by just under 23 percent, since the beginning of the year, according the Government and the Central Bank.

Inflation has also risen to 15.3 percent. Fuel and utility prices keep soaring too.

Additionally, the major cocoa producer's external debt keeps ballooning.

In his recent mid-year budget review, Ghana’s finance Minister, Seth Terkper, told Parliament that the major gold producing country’s “total public debt stock, which stood at GH¢35,999.64 million (US$19,150.78 million) as at end-December 2012, increased to GH¢52,125.91million (US$24,021.16 million) at the end of December 2013”.

Terkper said: “Of the total public debt stock, external debt was GH¢21,545.72 million (US$11,461.71 million) while domestic debt amounted to GH¢27,132.7 million (US$12,559.45 million), representing 47.72% and 52.28% of total debt, respectively”.

Otabil told an audience in the national capital, Accra, that all his life as a Ghanaian, things have never improved once they deteriorated, and thus, doubted things would get better.

He also expressed fears that the Cedi could fall to, as low as Ghc10 to $1.

Government officials and communicators have since taken him to the cleaners over his comment.

Agalga told private FM station, Joy, Saturday that Otabil’s "gloomy" picture of the young oil-producing country's economy portends ill consequences for the government’s efforts toward infusing confidence in the country's market by resorting to the IMF.

Agalga says foreign investors may be discouraged to venture into Ghana, if they heard the "gloomy" verdict of the famous motivational speaker and preacher, who commands a large followership both in Ghana and abroad.