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Business News of Thursday, 27 July 2023

Source: myxyzonline.com

Ken Ofori-Atta’s failure is monumental – NDC Parliamentary candidate

Ken Ofori-Atta, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, Finance Minister

NDC’s Parliamentary candidate for Sagnarigu, Attah Issah has bemoaned the financial wastage that is happening in the country under the auspices of Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta.

The financial analyst in an interview with TV XYZ disclosed that apart from running the economy down in the past 7 years, Ofori-Atta’s tenure has seen so much revenue run down the drain which he said has dwindled investor confidence.

He cited the renting of luxurious jets by President Akufo-Addo as one of the factors that have negatively affected the country’s economy and led the government to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout.

“When people see such wastage in the system investors lose confidence in your economy….And you realise that foreign direct investments keep declining and they [the investors] are shifting income to other countries because [they know] that once you invest into this country, they realise that the monies are being wasted,” he noted.

Attah Issah also pointed out that “Aids and grants are on the decline because investors and foreign governments have lost confidence in our economy.”

It will be recalled that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo came under fire in 2021 for spending huge sums of dollars on his foreign trips.

It emerged that a whopping Ghc2.8m was spent on a trip to France and Johannesburg, after renting an aircraft that cost the Ghanaian taxpayer £15,000 per hour.

The leader of the crusade to stop Akufo-Addo’s luxurious air travels, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa is reported to have said Akufo-Addo left Accra for Paris on the 16th of May. and proceeded to Johannesburg before returning to Accra on the 25th of May 2021.

He said the 23 hours president spent on the luxury jet accumulated a total of £345,000. He went on to calculate the amount spent at the exchange rate at the time which he said amounted to GHS2,828,432.80.

Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta who was asked to account for the foreign trips of the president on the private jets referred the matter to the Minister for National Security for the details.

Security experts said the details could be concealed since national security matters were not to be accounted for in public.

In Issah’s estimation, Ken Ofori-Atta has not shown leadership within the period that he has been in office, raising concerns that the failure is the reason he was being hounded out of office.