A former executive of the Tema East Constituency branch of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Stephen Ashitey Adjei, has expressed faith in a promise by former Finance Minister, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, to revive Ghana’s economy within two years if elected president in 2024.
At a press conference in Tema in which Mr. Ashitey Adjei, popularly called Moshake, vowed that the NDC will elect Duffuor to silence former President John Mahama, he said Duffuor can be trusted to deliver becaue he has done it before.
“We saw the resourcefulness of Dr. Kwabena Duffuor as Finance Minister under Mills before; the man has the track record to point to when he makes such promises,” Moshake told a teeming crowd of journalists on Tuesday.
According to him, apart from Duffuor’s performance as Finance Minister, the man’s achievements as an entrepreneur also speaks volumes of what he is capable of in matters of the economy.
Dr. Duffuor last week made the promise while touring parts of the Greater Accra Region in the quest for the 2024 presidential ticket of the NDC.
“The bush rat does not go out in the afternoon but when it does, there is a problem. That is why I’m out to solve that problem”, he told hundreds of delegates who had gathered at the Afienya Youth Training Institute.
“I’m in the contest because I want to take you out of the current economic challenges. We are hungry as Ghanaians despite the abundance of resources”, he added.
According to him, “In my first year, the dollar will go down and the cedi will rise again to make the economy more robust. Then in the second year, growth will accelerate.”
The former Finance Minister and NDC Flagbearer hopeful pointed out that, “We have done it before under Prof. Atta-Mills and we can do it again”, he told the enthusiastic delegates.
Moshake reiterates the point that indeed under President Mills, whose Finance Minister was Dr. Duffuor, the economy attained its best heights in the Fourth Republic.
“We attained single digit inflation, while Ghana achieved its best GDP growth rate of 14.4% in 2011, exactly two years after Dr. Kwabena Duffuor took office as Minister for Finance and Economic Planning,” Moshake said.
He added that, “for someone who has this track record to show, how can anyone doubt that he can repeat same?”
Moshake said a comparison of Duffuor’s record as Finance Minister to that of John Mahama as President shows that Duffuor has far more superior knowledge about the economy than Mr. Mahama.
“After Duffuor and Mills had done magic, John Mahama only later took over as President in 2012 and things started getting bad to the point that Ghana had to return to the IMF for a bailout,” Moshake said.
Source: ghanaweb.com / Richard Asamoah, Contributor
