By Laudia Sawer
Tema, Feb. 17, GNA – The Reverend Dr Samuel Worlanyo Mensah, an Economist has predicted that the government’s Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) programme will negatively affect the culture of investment among Ghanaians in the future.
The Government has announced that it has achieved the needed target of over 80 per cent signing onto the DDEP which is aimed at meeting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) deadline.
Rev. Dr Mensah, accessing the impact of the DDEP on Ghana’s economy, told the Ghana News Agency that the programme would derail the confidence of Ghanaians to invest in government instruments due to the fear of uncertainty of future happenings.
He added that the government’s inability to honour its obligations to the bondholders would not only kill people’s interest in investment but would also affect Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and local businesses.
According to him, with the local businesses, those who invested into bonds and have plans to use their coupons to pay workers and expand their businesses now must look for other alternatives as whether they joined the programme voluntarily or not it would still have an adverse effect on them.
“More businesses will collapse, especially when there will be no coupon rate to be paid to the bondholders, meanwhile their principal amount is also locked for a number of years,” he said.
Touching on the call of the pensioners’ bondholders for government to explicitly exempt them from the programme, he said their request was legitimate therefore government must listen to them adding that if the programme was truly voluntary why was the government not exempting them.
He said exempting the pensioners who have served the country during their working days and now rely on their bonds to survive would not affect the gains that the government said it has made in the signing on of bondholders unto the programme as its target has already been met.
Rev. Dr Mensah also called on the government to provide the public with the details of those who have purported to have signed onto the programme to enable the public and experts to cross-check on the claim, as according to him, the figures could be exaggerated.
Mr Francis Ameyibor, Ghana News Agency Tema Regional Manager called on the media and other communicators especially political party-spoke persons to be circumspect and not to inflame passion as the environment is already tense.
“Let us speak words of comfort and restore hope in the people, in a hazardous environment you don’t strike a match, the fire that you might set would consume all including you, let us work together to rebuild Ghana,” Mr Ameyibor noted.
GNA