Ghana’s future to be mortgaged by Agyapa deal – Former President Mahama
Former President John Dramani Mahama has once again criticised plans to re-introduce the Agyapa deal.
According to him, the Agyapa deal will be bad for the youth because it will invariably mean “mortgaging the future of the youth”.
He stated that the deal was outright inconsiderate because it was a plan to mortgage the future of the country and Ghana’s youth to fund the government’s desires.
Scheme
Explaining the rationale behind the Agyapa scheme in an interview on Cape 93.3FM, Mr Mahama said:
They are mortgaging Ghana for everything. They have sold everything for loans. Now they don’t have anything to sell anymore. It is our gold that is left, that is the Agyapa they want to do. Because they see that they’ve sold the utensils, they’ve sold the chairs in the hall and the bed in the bedroom, now they are looking for the next item to sell. They have settled on the windows to sell. That is our gold, which they want to sell this time. They want to use that to go and collect over one billion dollars
Mr Mahama said the government had always received a 10 percent stake as gold royalties, which royalty the Akufo-Addo government was intent on mortgaging for loans to spend.
He accused the Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, of being a participant in the abuse because “his company always gets a percentage from the loans raised.”
Resources
Mr Mahama, who was the 2020 National Democratic Congress (NDC) presidential candidate, said the government had benefited the most from Ghana’s resources and accrued the most revenue but
“this has not reflected in the development of the country and on the living standards of the people.”
He claimed that the government had mortgaged the Energy Sector Levy and the GETFund for many years, which imposed the burden of payment on the youth who would be paying the debts for many more years to come.
He went on:
Even though the ESLA bond we brought was supposed to be for five years, today the last ESLA bond have been extended to between 20 and 30 years. It means you and I, our children and our grandchildren will continue paying the loan until beyond 2030. GETFund has been mortgaged for the next 15 years. This means all contributions we pay for GETFund will only go toward paying loans and not for anything else
Mr Mahama said if that trend was not halted, it would get to a point “where we can no longer pay our debts.”