Finance Minister Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson has criticised the previous administration’s handling of Ghana’s debt crisis.
He accused the Akufo-Addo-led government of not only mismanaging the economy but also stripping pensioners of both their life savings and their dignity.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express on Thursday, July 22, just hours after presenting the 2025 Mid-Year Fiscal Policy Review to Parliament, Dr. Forson rejected suggestions that the current government’s progress should be attributed to the fiscal space created by the NPP administration’s debt restructuring.
“First of all, the debt restructuring for me was not well structured, it was very badly structured,” he said in response to a question about whether the debt exchange program had given the government breathing room.
“I say so in the sense that, you would ask, why do you restructure your debt and create such a hump?”
The Minister questioned the logic behind the debt profile created under the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP), describing it as reckless and cancerous.
“Are you setting someone up to fail? No one restructures a debt like this. Because restructuring a debt by creating this kind of humps can be cancerous. It can set the country back to another economic disaster like we saw in 2022,” he warned.
But it was his comments on how pensioners were affected that carried the most emotional weight.
“In fact, you do a debt restructuring to the extent that you deny pensioners of their savings and their dignity cannot be said to be a good debt restructuring,” Dr. Forson declared.
He blamed the previous government’s excessive borrowing for pushing Ghana into a financial corner that left citizens and creditors on a collision course.
“Why is it that government of Ghana should have gone into debt restructuring when it was avoidable in the first place. It is because the Akufo-Addo government borrowed and borrowed until Ghana could not pay its debt.
“They borrowed and borrowed until the needs of the citizens and then the needs of the creditors collided,” he said.
“That is not the kind of governance we want to do,” Dr. Forson concluded, distancing the current administration from the economic policies of its predecessor.
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