Felix Kwakye Ofosu, spokesperson for President John Dramani Mahama and Minister of State for Government Communications, has refuted claims by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that the current government was able to service debt payments due to buffers they left in its previous administration.
Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, former Finance Minister had said that the NPP government strategically built buffers in Ghana’s Debt Reserves Accounts to ensure the continuous servicing of the country’s debt obligations.
This came after President John Dramani Mahama’s directive to the Finance Minister, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, to honour the fourth coupon payment to Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) bondholders.
The Karaga MP noted that while the current administration is taking credit for the payment, it was important to recognise that the previous NPP government had already put in place financial mechanisms to support these obligations.
At a press briefing in Accra on Wednesday February 19, Kwakye Ofosu categorically stated that this narrative is untrue and provided details to support his assertion.
“Subsequent to the announcement of these payments and the announcement that the sinking fund has been reactivated, we have had some rebuttals from the NPP whose officials have claimed that we have been able to do that as a government only because they left some buffers and that it is not because of any specific intervention from President John Mahama. I wish to place on record that this narrative is untrue,” Kwakye Ofosu stated.
He explained that the sinking fund, officially known as the debt service reserve account, is where money is kept pending the payment of bondholders and other creditors. This account has both a cedi component and a dollar component, and statements of account can show transactions over a certain period.
Kwakye Ofosu challenged the NPP to provide evidence of the buffers they claimed to have left.
“For officials of the former government to be able to say that these payments and honoring of these obligations have been the outcome of work they did, they need to point specifically where those buffers were located,” he argued.
He noted that the last movement in the account under the NPP was on October 22, 2024, with a balance of $64,387, which is insufficient to cover payments in the range of GHS6 billion.
In contrast, on January 31, 2025, the NDC government, under Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, lodged an amount of $96,915,182 into the account.
“If you look at the cedi denominated reserve account, you will find also that when the NDC took over on January 7, 2025, the last time that anything had happened in that account before the NPP left was January 2, 2025. The amount of money in that account was GHS 155,463,435,” Kwakye Ofosu added.
He further stated that an additional GHS9 billion is currently sitting in the fund to pay for maturing coupons in July and August, bringing the total to GHS15 billion.
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