Current hardships due to NPP’s reckless spending in 2020 elections – Sammy Gyamfi

The National Communications Officer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Sammy Gyamfi has attributed the hardships Ghanaians are saddled with currently to, in his view, the mismanagement of the economy by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

He indicated that the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration engaged in reckless spending during the 2020 general elections by doling out cash to market women in the name of dealing with the impact of Covid-19, just to hold on to power.

According to him, spending in the 2020 polls produced the largest-ever budget deficit in the recent economic history of Ghana last year.

The government has, through the Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta indicated that the ravages of the coronavirus badly impacted the local economy hence the economic difficulties Ghanaians are going through.

Delivering the the 2022 budget statement to Parliament in November last year, Mr Ofori Atta said among other things that, “The hardship Ghanaians have experienced due to COVID-19 is not lost on the Government. We have been there with the people, playing the difficult but necessary balancing act of managing an economy put under extreme distress by the pandemic and, at the same time, supporting households and businesses to cope.”

But speaking on the New Day show with Johnnie Hughes on TV3 Tuesday February 1, Sammy Gyamfi said Ghana was not the only country that was hit by the pandemic.

“They wanted to win the 2020 polls by every means. So they distributed monies to market women in the name of COVID-19. This and other reckless spending is the cause of the suffering Ghanaians are going through.

“We are not the only country that suffered from COVID-19 but why are Ghanaians suffering this way. It is because of mismanagement that we find ourselves in this,” he said.