The General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party, John Boadu says in spite of the soaring debt stock of 334 billion Ghana cedis, the New Patriotic Party has done better with managing the county’s debt portfolio.

Mr. Boadu was speaking at a press conference in Mfantseman in the Central Region to kick start the training of party communicators in order to equip them with the requisite skills and knowledge to help them effectively communicate government policies and programs that will resonate with the electorate.

He said “all the arguments we get, if you want to use nominal figures, our situation is far better than when the NDC was there, if you want to use debt to GDP ratio, our situation is far better, if you even want to discount to dollar terms, our situation is far better than when NDC was there because before leaving power in 2009, the total debt stock was 9 billion Ghana cedis, at that time the cedi was even stronger than the dollar.

“However, when the NDC was leaving in 2016, the 9 billion cedis total debt had increased to over 120 billion Ghana cedis, that’s over 1500 percent”.

Mr. John Boadu further added that the impact of Covid-19 on Ghana’s debt accumulation cannot be underestimated as government had to incur additional expenditure of 25 billion Ghana cedis on Covid related issues.

”As we speak now our debt stock as a percentage to GDP is 76 percent and it is clearly because in 2020 alone because of Covid, we incurred cost that we were normally not going to incur.

“Expenditure on Covid related items was close to 14 billion Ghana cedis. Revenues that we were expecting from imports and exports because there were lock downs through out the country, through out the world was around 11.9 billion Ghana cedis.

“The combined effect is around 25 billion Ghana cedis in 2020 alone and this is in reference to just central government expenditure on Covid.”

He reiterated the need for party communicators to be abreast with facts to enable them counter the misinformation and the propaganda of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

He urged the communicators to make conscious effort to dispel the misinformation around the E-levy and hinted that projects that will be executed with the E-levy will be labelled for all to see what the monies collected have been used for.

Meanwhile, the training of NPP communicators marks the beginning of a deliberate effort to strengthen and empower the communicators in all the regions to help energize the party’s grassroot.