The National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC, Sammy Gyamfi has said Ghana’s economy has collapsed.

He referred to a comment made by the Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta to the effect that it will be disastrous if the proposed E-levy in the 2022 budget statement is not approved by Parliament, and also the downgrade of the economy by Fitch Ratings, to support his point.

Mr Ofori-Atta, at the government’s Town-Hall meeting to discuss the E-levy on Thursday, 27 January 2022, said, “When we were in the IMF programme, we couldn’t pay for nurses and teachers,” he said; “we couldn’t hire any more because there were restrictions on that. I mean, it’s just really thinking you can go back to Egypt.”

“In a way, we have forgotten how difficult and tenacious that master from Washington was.”

“So, we can deal with them for them to give us advice but we need not ever get into an IMF programme [again]. If we don’t do this E-levy, we’re just pushing ourselves in a way that would potentially end up in such a disaster,” Ofori-Atta said.

Fitch Ratings has also downgraded Ghana’s Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘B-‘ from ‘B’. The Outlook is Negative.

Speaking on this development on TV3’s New Day with Johnnie Hughes, Sammy Gyamfi said “You cannot but agree with fitch and the other international financial agencies who have all downgraded Ghana relative to our economy , our economic outlook.

“You cannot but agree with them that our economy is in shambles , our economy is in tatters , our economy has collapsed in fact as we speak we don’t have an economy . The Finance Minister agrees with me because few weeks you heard him say that without the passage of the E-levy our economy will collapse .

“If you have an economy that, according to the Finance Minister is billed to collapse , should a policy that can only bring in some 6.9billion is not approved then it means the economy has has already collapsed.”