John Dramani Mahama, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has pledged to amend the Public Financial Management Act to set a limit on how much the country can borrow from external creditors.
During a speech at Dodowa in the Shai-Osudoku constituency as part of his Greater Accra regional campaign, Mahama criticized the lack of transparency in Ghana’s debt management. He promised that if the NDC comes into power, the debt management department of the Ministry of Finance would become an autonomous entity, tasked with providing regular updates on the nation’s debt status.
“There is no transparency in our debt management. The only time we hear how much we owe as Ghanaians is when the Minister of Finance is reading the budget and tells us what our debt-to-GDP is. NDC is going to change that,” Mahama said.
He elaborated further on the NDC’s plan, stating, “We are going to make the debt management department of the Finance Ministry a separate autonomous department. It will be a Debt Management Authority, and it will have a head who will be autonomous and he will publish every quarter what our debt-to-GDP numbers are.”
In addition to increasing transparency, Mahama emphasized the need to restrict excessive borrowing by changing the Public Financial Management Act. He explained, “We will change parts of the Public Financial Management Act and put a clause there on how much money a Finance Minister can borrow. So, if we agree that we should not borrow more than 60% of GDP, then we will put it in the Public Financial Management Act so that no finance minister can come in future and borrow money as badly as he wants and leave a debt for the young people who are sitting here.”
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