Former Finance Minister Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam has hit back at President John Dramani Mahama over his recent State of the Nation Address (SONA), stating that President Mahama has no moral ground to criticize the NPP government’s handling of the energy sector debt.
“President Mahama should have been the last to come talking about energy sector debts when the bulk of the debt was caused by deals that he signed in his previous administration,” Dr. Amin Adam said while addressing the Minority’s “True State of the Nation Address” in Parliament on Monday, March 3.
According to him, at the beginning of 2017, the energy sector debt stood at $2.5 billion, and if nothing had been done, it could have reached $12 billion in five years.
However, he noted that Former President Nana Akufo-Addo’s administration prevented this from happening, reducing the debt to $2.4 billion by the end of his tenure.
Dr. Amin Adam further accused President Mahama’s administration of signing take-or-pay energy contracts, which forced the government to pay for excess capacity even when the power was not consumed.
He explained that the bulk of the Electricity Company of Ghana’s (ECG) debts referenced by Mahama were due to these contracts, as the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) only allows tariffs to reflect the cost of consumed energy, not contracted energy.
“Even with these debts from Mahama’s energy deals, President Akufo-Addo kept the lights on. We expect the current president to do the same. Keep the lights on, Mr. President,” he remarked.
Dr. Amin Adam dismissed Mahama’s concerns over Ghana’s debt situation, emphasizing that unlike the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the NPP government borrowed to develop the country.
He stated that by the end of their administration, the NPP had increased Ghana’s GDP by $20 billion and created 2.3 million jobs the highest job creation by any government since independence.
He urged the current administration to focus on sustaining the gains made by the NPP rather than engaging in political blame games.