The Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) has demanded that President Nana Akufo-Addo reassign Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta and the Minister of State at that ministry, Mr Charles Adu Boahen, if he cannot dismiss them.
The pro-government pressure group said in a press statement that the two ministers are to blame for the poor performance of the Ghana cedi in relation to other international currencies of trade.
“The Minister of Finance and the Minister of State at the Ministry, Ken Ofori Atta and Charles Adu Boahen, must be reassigned,” the group demanded.
AFAG’s demand comes a few days after media personality and comic Kwaku Sintim-Misa, alias KSM, asked Mr Ofori-Atta to resign.
He said this in a tweet where he claimed to be giving advice to Mr Ofori-Atta.
Again in the tweet, the award-winning comic posited that President Nana Akufo-Addo, who is cousins with Ken Ofori-Atta, has no desire to sack him from his office for a more competent person to assume it, even though it is the best for Ghana’s ailing economy.
“Advice to Ken Ofori-Atta. Bra [brother] Ken, it is obvious the President cannot and will not fire you,” Mr Sintim-Misa began.
“Please do him and Ghana a favour and respectfully resign for a competent financial manager to take charge,” he advised.
According to the TV show host, the resignation of the Finance Minister will be followed by restored confidence in Ghana’su economic recovery.
“I am sure that the financial markets will react positively to the news,” is how he put it.
Also, another entertainment personality, Lydia Forson, recently said: “It makes absolutely no sense that Ken Ofori-Atta is still the finance minister,” and queried: “How?”
“He’s lost the confidence of the people!” she argued.
The clamour for Mr Ofori-Atta’s head come on the back of the cedi’s very poor performance against the US dollar.
Bloomberg has named the Ghana cedi as the worst performing currency in the world. Now, more than 15 cedis is needed to buy one dollar in Accra, the capital of Ghana.
Recently, the United Kingdom’s Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked and subsequently their Prime Minister, Liz Truss, also resigned.
A section of the Ghanaian public have asked why this is not common in Ghana.
President Nana Akufo-Addo, last week, said Mr Ofori-Atta has been an excellent handler of the Ghanaian economy and, thus, sees no reason to sack him as being clamoured for by his critics.
Speaking to OTEC FM in the Ashanti Region on the first day of his four-day official working tour of that part of Ghana, Mr Akufo-Addo parried criticisms that his cousin is to blame for Ghana’s return to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help since he mismanaged the economy.
The president said he takes full responsibility for Ghana’s return to the IMF since he took the decision as the head of state.
He argued that the same Ofori-Atta was able to manage an IMF-programmed economy that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) inherited in 2017 to become one of the fastest-growing economies in the world with an average annual growth rate of 7%.
The president, thus, wondered, how he could cut ties with Mr Ofori-Atta as finance minister.
The president said he has a lot of difficulty understanding the clamour for Mr Ofori-Atta’s exit, since, he noted, even the IMF confirmed that the causes of the current economic situation in Ghana are global in nature rather than a result of internal mismanagement.
“It is very easy for people to say we went back to the IMF due to mismanagement of the economy. I do not accept that criticism because the reasons why we got into the situation we find ourselves has very little to do with us. In fact, the IMF confirmed this.”
Source: classfmonline.com
