Bawumia tours Upper East

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the New Patriotic Party ( NPP)  Vice-Presidential candidate, last Wednesday started a six-day tour of the Upper East Region. 

The running mate to Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is expected to tour 10 constituencies while in the region. 

Dr Bawumia, at the Navrongo Nursing and Community Health College last Wednesday, noted that the diversion of $250 million from the Bank of Ghana to UBA, which was subsequently loaned to the government through Treasury Bills, was another clear mark of the incompetence and brazen corruption of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government. 

He made these comments on the UBA deal and the responses that had come from various government officials. 

Speaking to a packed auditorium, a statement from the party said, Dr Bawumia recounted the circumstances around the scandal and how the government had borrowed a billion dollars from the Eurobond market, at a high interest rate, only for it to divert 250 million of the proceeds to a private bank under the guise of the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF). 

Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund

“The GIIF is not ready to invest in any project. So this money was lying at the Bank of Ghana all along. Suddenly, in December last year, the Finance Minister and his colleagues decided that they were going to take this money at the Bank of Ghana, which we are paying 10.75 per cent on, on the International Market, and transfer it to a private bank, which is the UBA.

“Now the interesting thing is that they had reached an agreement with the UBA, where they placed the money that UBA will pay them an interest of about 10 per cent but UBA now turns back to lend the money back to the government at over 20 per cent. Have you heard of anything like this? You give someone money at 10 per cent and borrow back that same money at over 20 per cent? Have you heard this before?” he quizzed to loud responses of “No” “No” “No” from the audience.