The Bank of Ghana (BoG) and the Ministry of Finance have rubbished claims by the minority National Democratic Congress (NDC) that the Central Bank has printed some GH¢22 billion to shore up the economy.
The claim, Deputy Minister for Finance Dr. John Kumah said, is without foundation and charged Ghanaians to take the claims with a pinch of salt.
Similarly, BoG in a statement issued yesterday stressed that the minority’s claim of money printing was false.
Dr. Kumah said accusing the Minister for Finance of hiding that information in an appendix in the Mid-Year Review Budget (Page 97, Appendix A) is simply disingenuous because the budget is a public document and available for everybody to read.
“So how is it that he picked up this document, read page 97 and then said the information has been hidden?
“What is the meaning of that? The Finance Minister gave you this document and you found out there is an information on Bank of Ghana about GH¢22 billion and your position is that it is hidden”, he wondered.
Dr. Kumah was reacting to claims by Ranking Member of the Finance Committee of Parliament, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, that the Bank of Ghana illegally printed GH¢22 billion without recourse to Parliament.
The Ranking member’s pronouncements, he said, clearly show the NDC lacks capacity to read and understand and indeed dislike reading.
“They think that they don’t have to read to know the content of this document. So if they read and find an information in what we have given them, then it means we have hidden it, please how do you explain that?
“Nobody should impugn the integrity of the Finance Ministry or the Minister of this government for information we have given out to the public.”
He argued the Bank of Ghana Act allows central government and the BoG to operate on overdraft basis and therefore within the laws of the country.
The Deputy Minister noted that on Ghana’s own balance sheet, BoG can give overdraft to the government as loan, which can be repaid within a specified period.
This, he said, is not the first time any government has done that and stressed when Ato Forson was Deputy Minister, Bank of Ghana supported the Ministry of Finance and the then government on the same arrangement within the Bank of Ghana Act.
He questioned whether the overdrafts that BoG gives governments have been reclassified as printing money.
That, he said, is not economics and exposes the NDC Minority’s incompetence and lack of appreciation of the situation.
Bank of Ghana, he stressed, has not printed any money.
