Finance Minister is too open about the economy, it worries me – Information Minister
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Minister of Information and Media Relations, Mahama Ayariga says the frankness of the Finance Minister on the state of the economy, gets him worried.
According to him, Mr. Seth Terpker is too open with matters relating to the state of the economy.
Mahama Ayariga said Seth Terpker’s policy of honesty is giving government communicators a headache over how to defend government on an economy said to be cruising into crisis.
The economy dominated discussions earlier this week following issues raised in a public lecture delivered on the falling cedi by the 2012 running mate of the New Patriotic Party, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia last Tuesday, at the Central University College, Miotso, Accra.
Speaking on Newsfile on Multi TV and Joy FM, Saturday, the Information Minister said Dr. Bawumia fed on submissions made a couple of months ago on the state of the economy by Seth Terkper which the opposition is now using as a weapon against the government.
This, Mr. Ayariga said, gives him too much discomfort.
“There is nothing that Bawumia is saying that the Finance Minister has not said”, he ruled.
“I have consistently had problems with the Finance Minister [Seth Terkper] on this issue. I must say it on this platform because, he has insisted on, ‘look if you want Ghanaians to help you solve problems, you would have to state it”. Ayariga disagrees with this style.
“People are now using those statements purely for propaganda purposes and they are not helping in managing the situation”, he observed.
The finance minister has had his share of criticism with calls within the governing National Democratic Congress for him to be sacked over his handling of the economy.
Mahama Ayariga wants Mr. Terkper to be more cautious with information.
“You have to manage your statement because, if you don’t manage your statement very well, it may be the one that will trigger a certain behavior and that is the problem I have now”.
In view of Seth Terkper’s level of frankness with economic data, Mahama Ayariga sees no need to read a 50-page document on the economy dubbed ‘Bawunomics’.
He would prefer to read his recommendations, but he found out that most of those recommendations are already being implemented by government.
-joynews
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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