Bawumia questions government claims on projects

NPP Vice-Presidential candidate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, NPP, says Ghanaians must reject the government’s claims it has made massive investments in projects.
He said the government of the National Democratic Congress was simply trying to hoodwink the people into a false sense of hope when the reality points to the contrary.
Dr. Bawumia outlined these six reasons he believes Ghanaians must reject the government’s claims.
He was delivering a lecture on the topic “The Role of Financial Discipline and Investment In National Development” at a National Financial Literacy and Investment Summit organised by the University Students Association of Ghana (USAG) at the University for Development Studies, Wa Campus.
Where is the rest of the money and what could it have done? Bawumia asks and answers
Dr. Bawumia pointed out that the NDC had increased Ghana’s debt in seven years by GHC90 billion, from GHC9.5 billion at the end of 2009 to some GHC99 billion currently; an equivalent of some 37 billion dollars at the time of borrowing.
“First, If you sum the cost of all the loan financed projects listed in the green book (even including those with artistic impressions, it is less than $7 billion. Meanwhile, the government has borrowed the equivalent of $37 billion so where is the rest of the money? Indeed, given the resources at its disposal one should expect at least four times the quantum of investment that the NDC claims to have undertaken”, Dr. Bawumia said, as he began listing the six reasons.
Dr. Bawumia proceeded to list a number of things the over 30billion dollars from borrowing the NDC cannot account for, could have done, which proves that contrary to the claims, the NDC has done a bad job at giving Ghanaians their due after undertaking unprecedented borrowing in the last seven years.
“The close to $30 billion of borrowing that was not used for projects could have inter alia:

• Developed the Rail network from Accra to Paga and transformed many parts of the country just by this investment.
• Solved the water problems in Ghana
• Solved the energy problem and not put the country through 4 years of dumsor at the cost of human lives and collapsing businesses and unemployment
• Put in place at least 1000 kilometres of asphalted roads in each region. There will be no major road problem left in any region after this.
• Transformed Agriculture in the Northern regions, Afram Plains and Ghana through investment in machinery, irrigation and dams
• Put in place one world class hospital in each region
• Buy at least 1000 ambulances for the Ghana Ambulance service
• Set up factories with the private sector across the country to add value to our raw materials and create jobs. On the issue of jobs, the question is, if the government has taken a whole 4 years to solve a basic problem like Dumsor, how long will it take to address unemployment? At this pace, many of the unemployed youths will be over the pension age before the NDC finds a solution to the unemployment problem.
• Equip our existing health and education institutions with state of the art facilities
• Build an additional 600 of the Senior High Schools the government is currently trying to build”, he said.

 
Source – Joyfm