By Franklin Asare Donkor
Ghana’s Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has touted the New Patriotic Party (NPP) as a party of ideas and a transformational in our approach.
According to him, the governing NPP has “implemented transformational ideas” and should be credited for how smoothly the country is being run.
The Vice President said this at the NPP’s thanksgiving service held on Thursday.
Dr. Bawumia listed the widely criticized gold for oil policy as one such transformational policy.
“We are a government of ideas and transformational ideas, and we are thankful to God for the wonderful ideas that this government has been able to implement.
We have implemented the gold for oil policy and the public and the country will soon see its benefits in the next few months and that is going to reduce the demand at the Bank of Ghana for foreign exchange and bring down the fuel prices, and you have already seen the fuel prices coming down.”
The Vice President first gave a hint of the barter of “sustainably mined gold for oil” at an AGI Awards night organized in Accra in November which he indicated was “key to addressing the economic crisis confronting the country in its energy needs.”
He blamed the hike in fuel prices on the depreciation of the cedi which lost over 50 percent of its value in 2022.
Dr. Bawumia said, in a bid “to address this fundamental challenge that we all face of depreciation and its impact on fuel and utility prices and food and so on, the government has opted to implement a policy of using our gold to buy oil products.”
