Former President John Dramani Mahama has maintained that the perception of hardships in the country is not the creation of him and his National Democratic Congress government.

“The perception that the creation of hardships in the country was in the era of my administration is wrong but the current administration,” he stressed.

Former President Mahama criticised the current administration for the hardships and his government should not be blamed because his government did not mismanage the economy.

He asked the government to organise an economic forum just as he did with the Senchi Forum to come out with prudent socioeconomic policies and programmes to alleviate the plight of the citizenry.

Chastising some economic experts who were unable to criticise the Akufo-Addo-led administration for what he described as the mismanagement of the economy, the former president bemoaned “these same experts were vocal during my tenure but have suddenly kept mute under the Akufo-Addo-led administration.

“These experts have created the impression that the hardships that Ghanaians are saddled with at the moment are my creation but it is a wrong perception and our people are galled by the hypocrisy of so-called economic experts. They asked my government in 2016 to forget about economic statistics and look at the escalation of prices of cement and other products on the market.

“Today, we are hearing the same experts in government hold-up statistics, inflation and other economic jargons to say that life is better for them than in my era which is unfortunate since my government and I should not be held responsible but bad policies and programmes has led to mismanagement of the economy,” former President Mahama fumed.

Responding, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo wondered how a former president could accuse his government of mismanagement when comparing both performances whether he (Akufo-Addo) was offering economic mismanagement to citizens.

He described former President Mahama’s stewardship as an unmitigated disaster because economic growth rate in 2016 stood at 3.4 per cent, the lowest in two decades; with all other macroeconomic indicators pointing in the wrong direction. -3news.com