He commended leaders of the two religions for the social cohesion and asked Muslims in particular to intensify prayers in this season of Ramadan to deepen the prevailing national peace as the country prepares for Election 2020.

The Vice President gave the commendation when he joined hundreds of Muslim worshippers at the Sampa Central Mosque in the Jaman North District of the Bono Region as part of his two-day visit to Bono and Ahafo Regions.

Accompanied by some Ministers and Deputy Ministers of State, Members of Parliament, the Vice President was in the two Regions to interact with Muslim communities as they observe the Islamic annual tradition of month-long prayers and fasting.

Vice President Bawumia noted that issues of religion and faith were very sensitive, saying it was extremely difficult for Muslims and Christians elsewhere to co-exist and thus the Zongo communities in particular must be applauded. He reiterated the development of the Zongo communities remained one of the major priorities of the government, assuring that each of the 1,080 Zongo communities in the country would benefit from the Zongo Development Fund. This, the Vice President added would be a reality if the Zongo communities supported and voted to retain the government in Election 2020.

Responding to an appeal by Alhaji Seidu Adams, the Jaman North District Chief Imam, Dr. Bawumia assured that the government would tar the three-kilometer Sampa town roads to befit a District capital.

He added that the government would also consider the establishment of an Islamic Senior High School in the area for many of the Zongo youth to benefit from the free SHS programme.

The Vice President presented 25 bags of rice and 25 bags of sugar and undisclosed sum of money to the leadership of the Zongo community in Sampa.

Alhaji Adams had earlier appealed to the Vice President to also help address the poor water situation in the area.

Source: GNA

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He insisted that the current economic fundamentals of the country are strong contrary to the opposition National Democratic Congress’ logic that the recent cedi fall must be due to weak economic fundamentals.

“If the fundamentals are weak, the exchange rate will expose you, but if the exchange rate moves you cannot jump into that conclusion that the fundamentals are weak, that defies logic,” he said.

Justifying his claim of strong economic fundamentals with data evidence, Dr. Bawumia said in 2014, the exchange rate depreciated by 31.3 per cent, the fiscal deficit was 10.1 of GDP and public debt rose to 70.2 percent of GDP, inflation rose to 17 per cent and GDP growth had declined from 7.3 per cent to 4 per cent.

The exchange rate in 2014, he said, exposed the weak economic fundamentals as compared to 2018.

Explaining further, he said at the end of December 2017, the cedi had cumulatively depreciated by 4.9 percent compared to 9.6 percent in 2016 and this was the Cedi’s best performance since 2011 at the end of 2017.

He said “we had the best performance of the cedi since 2011.”

“The data on the annual rate of the cedi in recent years shows that the best performance so far under the NPP government, the 8.4 per cent depreciation of the cedi that we saw in 2018 that worst performance is better than the best performance under the previous government between 2012 and 2016, so our worst is better than your best.”

Vice President Bawumia further indicated that the sudden sharp depreciation of the cedi at the beginning of 2019 has largely been reversed without any intervention from the Bank of Ghana.

He noted that “within a week the cedi went up to close to 5.9 to the dollar and then it retreated back to about 5.07 and even was threatening to go below 5. This is really an unprecedented development that you don’t normally ….when the Bank of Ghana had not intervened in the market, in fact if you look at it at the end of March 2019 the cedi has depreciated by about 5.18 per cent so far this year.”

Source: GhanaWeb

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