The Minority in
Parliament has strongly criticized President Nana Akufo-Addo for his recent
remarks attacking international rating agencies.
During the
30th-anniversary celebration of the African Export-Import Bank in Accra,
President Akufo-Addo expressed his dissatisfaction with the reckless downgrades
made by rating agencies, stating that they are detrimental to developing
countries like Ghana and have contributed to the country’s current economic
challenges.
Stressing the
impacts of the ratings, president Akufo-Addo said being “the AU champion for
African financial institutions and leader of a country that recently had to
deal with one of the most difficult periods in his post-independent history,
difficulties that were exacerbated by the reckless behaviour of rating agencies
that engaged in pro-cyclical downgrades that shut Ghana out of the capital
market and turned a liquidity crisis into a solvency crisis.”
However, in
response to the president’s comments, Isaac Adongo, the Deputy Ranking Member
on the Finance Committee of Parliament, labelled Akufo-Addo as dishonest.
Adongo argued
that these ratings are an integral part of the accepted global financial
systems. He pointed out that when the rating agencies had assigned high ratings
to Ghana in the past, the country had benefited by successfully accessing the
capital markets and securing significant investments.
“You see the
dishonesty, when the rating agencies were rating us high and we were going to
the capital markets and showing them the rating of Ghana and collecting the $3
billion, were we in bed with them to deceive the investors? What have the
rating agencies said that is not true?
“They should
tell that man [Akufo-Addo] that rating is not a diplomatic manoeuvre, he should
stop going around his peers and telling them stories. The rating agencies and
the capital market predates his own life and it is part of the global financial
system that has come to be accepted. He has been a beneficiary of it.”
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