Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Thursday, October 13, 2016
President John Mahama appears
to have invited more attacks onto himself following his demand for the cost of
the 2007 cedi redenomination, a challenge he threw at the vice presidential
candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.
Dr Bawumia expressed ‘surprise’
at President Mahama’s cedi redenomination challenge, wondering why the
president would engage in propaganda by alleging corruption.
President
Mahama, while campaigning in Accra on Tuesday, asked Dr. Bawumia, a former deputy
Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), to disclose the total amount spent on the cedi
redenomination exercise carried out by the previous Kufuor administration.
“Do
we remember the cedi redenomination under President Kufuor? During that time,
someone (Bawumia) was the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana and up till now,
even me as a president, do not know the cost of the redenomination exercise,” he
queried.
Incompetent Tag
But Dr. Bawumia, a renowned economist
and astute banker, hit back, saying the president’s request “is another
demonstration of incompetence by the Mahama-led administration.”
The president’s comment is
coming at a time Dr. Bawumia is asking the NDC flag bearer who is campaigning
for a re-election, to stop “embarrassing” himself with warped interpretations
of the current economic situation.
“Today's request for
disclosure on the 2007 redenomination is another demonstration of incompetence.
Apart from the fact that the then Governor disclosed the cost as far back as
2007, if the president really wanted to find out the cost of the
redenomination, he could simply have
asked his Veep, who was the Bank of Ghana Governor, especially when the president
was head of the Economic Management Team between 2009 and 2012.”
Redenomination Cost
In 2007, then BoG Governor
Dr. Paul Acquah, announced at a news conference that the bank spent a total of
$62 million on the redenomination exercise and said the figure represented a
saving of $28 million if compared with the $94.8 million spent in 2003 and 2006
to replace worn-out notes and coins to top up the currency.
“I prefer to call it savings
because we now have to spend less to annually top up or replace currency in
circulation,” Dr. Acquah had said.
Petty Propaganda
Dr. Bawumia described the President
Mahama’s challenge as “petty propaganda” and said “this should be beneath
someone of the stature of a president.”
He maintained that “it is
clear he is very poorly briefed, but when a president decides to join the
bandwagon of propaganda, he only ends up embarrassing himself.”
He reiterated that he was
waiting for the about 170 posers he sent to the NDC government, saying “Moving
on, can the president (with the same zeal) and his Economic Management Team respond
to the 170 statements contained in my last lecture?”
Mr
Amissah-Arthur also replaced the then GH¢50 notes with the current notes
without telling anybody how much it cost the nation.
He
also introduced new GH¢2 notes and failed to disclose the total cost.
President
Mahama indicated that the main opposition party has no right to describe him as
incompetent since it had failed to give full account of a simple redenomination
exercise.
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