I'll turn Nana Addo's mess around in 2021 – Mahama assures Ghanaians

Addressing supporters and sympathizers of the NDC at Adjei Kojo in the Tema West constituency as part of his five-day campaign tour of the Greater Accra Region, he said "Four years have come and we can make a judgment about what their performance has been.

"I mean for them to be able to say that they’ve fulfilled all their promises is the most laughable moment in Ghana's history.

"We remember all the things that were said. They said that we were sitting on money but Ghanaians were hungry. Aren't we hungrier today than we were in 2016?"

He also expressed concerns over the rising debt level of the country under the government adding that Ghana's government debt has increased as it spends more than planned.

Ghana's total public debt stock jumped by 1.66 percent to hit GH¢263. 1 billion ($46.3bn) in July 2020, according to the latest Summary of Macroeconomic and Financial Data.

This represents about 68.3 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product and is gradually nearing the dreaded 70% of GDP.

"We were told that we can develop this country without borrowing because the money is here. Today, we've crossed the highly indebted distress country mark because 70 percent is the mark. If you go above 70 percent, it means you are a high debt distress country.

John Mahama and Nana Addo ece-auto-gen

"In the years when the HIPC programme was on, we would have been declared HIPC by now," Mahama said.

He indicated that "I said in 2016, I passed the Energy Sector Levy Act (ESLA), that ESLA Act alone in 2017 brought in GHS3billion and who inherited that money? President Akufo-Addo inherited that money.

"I set up the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund and I put seed money of $270 million and I left it to President Akufo-Addo. Where is that money?

"When Covid happened, but for the stabilisation fund that was set up in my time, the 1.2 billion that they had to take out of the Covid fund to provide food for people, to provide PPE for people, to provide stimulus packages for people if I hadn’t set up that fund so that any time we have a disaster or we have an external shock we can have money available to be able to withstand the shock, we wouldn’t have gotten that 1.2billion.

"I left him money in the stabilisation fund. I left him money in the sinking fund, more than $300million and all those things are verifiable.

"How much is he going to leave to President Mahama in 2021? There's nothing in the Ghana infrastructure fund, they’ve spent all of it.

"He [Nana Addo] hasn't put anything into the sinking fund. He has not put anything into the stabilisation fund.

"He has mortgaged the energy sector levy for the next 10-15 years, even the GETFund has been mortgaged for the next 10 years and so he is rather going to leave a mess to the new NDC government that is coming in 2021.

"But as I said, let us never give up hope because we are masters at turning things around, we will inherit a mess but by God’s grace we will turn things around."