The Executive Director of the Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA) Mr. Mensah Thompson has disagreed with Dr John Kwabena Kwakye, the Director of Research at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), suggestions that adopting the dollar as Ghana’s currency will stabilize the economy.
Dr John Kwabena Kwakye suggested that the best solution to end Ghana’s economic woes is to adopt the United States dollar as a currency.
However, Mr Thompson speaking on Breakfast Daily on Citi TV, said Ghana’s economic woes are a result of prolonged recklessness and uncontrolled borrowing. He said adopting the US dollar won’t solve such problems.
According to Mr Thompson, former Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, the governor of the Bank of Ghana and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo are the pains of Ghana as they have single-handedly led Ghana down this path.
“We are here not because our currency is not held in dollars, we are here because of the recklessness of Ken Ofori-Atta, the governor of the Central Bank and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. The root cause of our problem is recklessness, borrowing and people who just don’t understand simple economic management who implemented faze economic restructuring that has thrown the economy into a cyclic spiral now going back into a debt hole and the solution is not dollarization.”
Mr. Thompson added that the decision by the Economic Management Team to restructure Ghana’s domestic debt was a bad idea that worsened the plight of the Cedi.
“I have always asked myself, why did the government, after all the recklessness of Ken Ofori-Atta, still decide that if they were going under a debt restructuring programme, Ken Ofori-Atta was the person they were going to allow to oversee that debt restructuring, I was surprised when he decided to restructure our domestic debt” he noted.