TEIN-UDS Navrongo contest Bawumia's speech on economy

The Navrongo Chapter of the NDC's Tertiary Educational Institutions Network (TEIN), of the University of Development Studies (UDS) has refuted all the economic analysis Dr Mahamudu Bawumia made on their campus when he graced the NPP's TESCON Freshers' Welcoming programme.

In a statement signed by the President of TEIN-UDS, Mr Mordey Yaw David on Thursday March 4, 2015, it said "Dr Mahamudu Bawumia unequivocally as usual outlined that the NDC government has destroyed the ever robust currency the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government left and that over their stay in office the cedi has depreciated by 50%".

“This was a true lie orchestrated by Bawumia to deceive the student body after superintending over gross incompetent economic policies in the era of the NPP government”, the statement said.

It further stated that “when it comes to the stabilization of the cedi, NPP did absolutely nothing to prop-up the cedi under their government but notoriously redenominated the cedi for no proper value for money”.

The statement concluded that "President John Dramani Mahama is committed, dedicated and willing to solve and completely eradicate the prevailing erratic power situation and ready to fix it which only goes a long way to prove that he is the savior of Ghana till 2021".

Read the full statement below:

TEIN UDS NAVRONGO CHAPTER CHASES BAWUMIA OVER ECONOMIC LIES.

Friends from the media, fellow faithfuls of our great umbrella fraternity, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. A few weeks ago, the chronic seasoned economic propagandist, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia made some porous economic analysis skewed towards his parochial bid to aid Akufo Addo secure victory in 2016.

That took place on this very campus when he graced the TESCON Freshers’ Welcoming. We consider it emphatically catastrophic for him a former deputy governor of Bank of Ghana and for that matter a technocrat to cook his own figures to make pressing controversial analysis. No wonder, he finds himself in NPP.

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia unequivocally as usual outlined that the NDC government has destroyed the ever robust currency the NPP government left and that over our stay in office the cedi has depreciated by 50%. This was a true lie orchestrated by Bawumia to deceive the student body after superintending over gross incompetent economic policies in the era of the NPP government.

When it comes to the stabilization of the cedi, NPP did absolutely nothing to prop-up the cedi under their government but notoriously redenominated the cedi for no proper value for money.

According to a document entitled ”Non-oil Forex Sales to Bank of Ghana, 1997-2007”: in 2002 Bank of Ghana, under the deputy governorship of Dr Bawumia spent US$88.59 million to prop-up the cedi but to no avail; in 2003, the Bank of Ghana again spent US$ 180.72 million in the self-defeating exercise; in the election year of 2004, the Bank spent a whopping US$ 351.75 million in a vain effort to protect the cedi; in 2006 an amount of US$ 338.47 million was also spent to prop up the cedi, and that also amounted to failure; in 2007, the amount spent on the intervention exercise was US$418.95 million which all amounted to gross mismanagement.

In 2007, the cedi was desperately redenominated, aftermath sold Ghana Telecom and Ghana Airway all to prop up the cedi, yet the cedi depreciated miraculously under Bawumia’s watch. The cedi-dollar exchange rate between January 2008 and mid-August 2008 showed that the cedi depreciated by over 35% from GH? 0.9 = US$ 1.00 to GH?1.20 = US$ 1.00 and GH?1.90=US$1.00 in the later part of 2008.

This clearly showed that their measures were only going to help in the short-run. Today, the innocent president John Dramani Mahama is working around the clock to arrest the rots embedded by the clueless NPP government. Thanks be to God the Mahama-led Administration is working dedicatedly to adopt astronomical and permanent measures to solve the fall of the value of the cedi against major foreign currencies such as the US Dollar.

It is awfully refreshing to note that Dr Bawumia does not even know the total debt of Ghana right from independence to date. Having worked with Bank of Ghana as deputy governor, he struggled to simply quote the US$ 21.733 billion debt of Ghana since independence. Nonetheless, out of the total debt NPP government from 2001 to 2008 left a total debt of US$ 8.1 billion as of January 2009 with non-negotiable increased interest.

These are facts and figures from our own state institutions, so where lies the credibility of Dr Bawumia’s self-sourced US$ 27 billion borrowed by the NDC government which he purportedly used to deceive the students. The NDC government borrowed only US$14.6 billion to our debt stock.

In fact, Bawumia should have best known that, we are in the Faculty of Mathematical and Applied Sciences, so there was no way figures could be massaged to woo us. Fellow countrymen and women, it is emphatically untrue on his part to state that the numerous development projects we have seen under the NDC government accounted for only US$ 3.5 billion.

The crunched epistle according to Dr Bawumia showed that, the economy performed abysmally under the NDC government at a GDP of 3.8 with huge debt which prompted the NPP government to join the league of HIPC to free debt in the early 2000s. Factually, the previous NDC government left a GDP of 4.8% and not 3.8%, so where lies Bawumia’s claim of the propping the GDP from 3.8 to 6.4?

Notwithstanding that, after taking Ghana to HIPC to free debt, what haven’t we seen? They borrowed US$1 billion for non-existing recurrent expenditure; Tema Oil Refinery was virtually at standstill due to crippling debts which nearly collapsed Ghana Commercial Bank among others. Dr Bawumia and his “apostles of good governance” re-energized dubious corruption scandals such as: Speaker loots state bungalows, diversion of GH?6 million of tax payers’ money to fund NPP propaganda machinery; hotel Kuffour; E.O group shares in jubilee filed; sale of Ghana Airways’ properties to party cronies which are now converted into “chop bars”; Kuffour’s house renovation; popular cocaine trade, Hotel Kuffuor saga to state but a few. Dr Bawumia claimed the NDC are corrupt but he forgot his boss (Akufo Addo) who took a bribe of US$ 5000 to approve the sale of Ghana Telecom for only US$ 900 million.

Even though selective myopic like Dr Bawumia has tuned up his mind to disregard the unparalleled efforts of the NDC government in recent times, the good people of Ghana have seen the tremendous infrastructural development and improvement in social intervention. Between 2009 and now, two thousand and sixty four basic schools projects have been undertaken and completed and handed over to the education authority.

It is also a fact that between 2009 to date the text books ratio to pupils which were one text book to four pupils is now one pupil to four text books. Under water, government has completed four major water projects which will provide additional 63.3million gallons of water daily to our water system.

They included Kpong water project, Accra-Tema metropolitan water supply project, Kpong intake rehabilitation project and Teshie-Nungua Desalination water project. On health, government have built and completed the University of Ghana Teaching Hospital, Ridge Hospital expansion project and also plans are advanced to construct 15 polyclinics by 2016.

Meanwhile, over 160 CHPS compounds have been constructed out of the 10% salary cut by the government appointees. Among others are the tourists attraction Nkrumah Interchange, Kasoa Interchange, revamping of Komenda Sugar and Kumasi Shoe Factories, Tamale International Airport, Tamale Teaching Hospital, Ayenfuri Road, Awoshei-Pokuase Road, Elubo Road, the almighty Eastern Corridor Road, Kotokuraba Market, Cape Coast Sports Stadium, Elimina Fish Processing Plant, Atoabo Gas Plant and several other economically viable projects.

Moreover, most of our statutory funds including NHIS Fund, GET Fund, District Assembly Common Fund and many more have been paid despite the temporal economic challenges we pass through as a nation. It will be impossible for Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to say that government has done absolutely nothing to saving the plight of the well descending Ghanaians.

The erratic power supply in Ghana now was in existence since 1990’s. It is only a temporal situation of the problem getting exacerbated as our demand for electricity supply has out weighted the supply we get from VRA. Currently, the total amount of power produced in Ghana is 2845MW, which represents the installed capacity of the plants we have. Of this figure, over 53% is hydro based with Akosombo Hydro Plants having the highest amount of 1020MW installed capacity and Kpong GS Hydro Plant having the capacity of 160MW.

Next is the Bui Hydro Dam with 400MW which is mostly used at the peak hours of the day. The thermal plants occupy about 45% of our total power production as a nation. It is a statement of fact that the NDC government added about 1033MW to the national grid and currently awaits emergency power projects such as 450MW Karpower ship from Turkey, 250MW APR from UAE and 300MW GE.

The 1000MW emergency power will help mitigate the recent energy challenges in the short run whiles plans are on the streamline to inject over 3400MW of power into our power transmission grid and this include 360MW Sunon Asogli (Phase II), 750MW Sunon Asogli (Coal fired), 350MW Cen Power, 360MW Jacobsen, 240MW Amandi, 1000MW GE, 185MW VRA (T4), 220MW VRA (KTPP) and 330MW from TT1, CENIT and KTPP will not only help manage the perennial power fluctuation but will in the long run fix the so-called “dumsor”.

It is therefore a big fallacy for K.T Hammond of the NPP to say that the NDC only added 2.5MW from the Navrongo Solar Plants to the national grid. As a matter of fact, the NPP never added 885.85MW. The installation of power generators which contributed 126MW, the upgrading of the Akosombo Hydro Dam with a capacity of 108MW and the facilitation of the construction of the Sunon Asogli Power Plant as opined by Honorable K T Hammond, are blatant and brazen lies.

Are these not the very power generations which became white elephant and became a gross waste of the tax payer resources and eventually taken out of the country? What then is the NPP saying? They have indeed thrown enough dust into our eyes and ears as a people. Talking about “Dumsor”, have the NPP forgotten so soon that it happened in 1983, 1998 and during their tenure in 2006 to 2007 before the late Prof J.E.A Mills came into power to rescue us? Dr. Kwame Nkrumah inaugurated the 588MW Akosombo Hydro Power Plant on the 2nd of January, 1966.

Over the years most governments turn to develop additional turbines at the Akosombo Hydro Power. FLT LT JJ Rawlings led former NDC administration commissioned the 160MW Kpong Hydro Dam. The NDC again out of wisdom and future expectancy and the prescience for agency as we face now, decided to give the country its first ever 550MW Thermal Plant in Aboadzi and the 330MW TAPCO, 220MW TICO, 125MW TTIPP, 49.5MW TT2PP, 200MW SAP, 125MW CENIT and 132MW T3 Thermal Power generations.

The boast by the NPP about the construction of the Bui Dam is a fallacy. The Bui Hydro Dam Project of 400MW was finally executed by the late president JEA Mills. More so, it was commissioned by President John Dramani Mahama. Prof JEA Mills went further to add the T3 Thermal Plant in Takoradi with a capacity of 132MW, again commissioned by John Dramani Mahama. His Excellency John Dramani Mahama then went ahead to give the country its first ever solar plant in Navrongo in the Upper East Region with 2.5MW.

So then what business has the NPP got to say that John Dramani Mahama cannot solve the “Dumsor” problem? JJ Rawlings has demonstrated it, JEA Mills did same and John Dramani Mahama has taken clue from their legacies. Just a few days ago, CENIT and TICO also came on board to add another 220MW to already existing national grid. Our increase in population has certainly been a prime factor in the “Dumsor” we are experiencing as a people now.

John Mahama is committed, dedicated and willing to solve and completely eradicate the problem. As he owns up for the responsibility of the prevailing erratic power situation and ready to fix it, only goes a long way to prove that he is the savior of Ghana till 2021. “Dumsor” will go in 2015 but John Mahama will go after 2021.

LONG LIVE TEIN
LONG LIVE NDC
LONG LIVE GHANA

..........Signed………..
Mordey Yaw David, President (0241841599/0206260504)
Nkrumah Cyril K. Dzidedi, Communications Officer (0209912488)
Abdul-Rahaman Hatik,Organizer
(0261379999)
Humphrey Datsomor, Director of Research (0200815205)