The Majority Leader and Member of Parliament for Suame, Honourable Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has sought to put to bed once and for all the notion that the Vice President is in charge of managing the economy as head of the Economic Management Team (EMT).

Speaking on the floor of the house during the 2023 budget deliberations, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister said the belief is a common misconception but the truth is that, the Finance Minister manages the economy on behalf of the President.

Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu added that the Economic Management Team has no constitutional basis hence the powers people assign to it are clearly overblown and is simply a means to attack the economic acumen of  Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.

“When the Minority Group discusses the current economic challenges, they chuck along the Vice President as chair on Economic Management Team of cabinet. President Mills after 2011 had GDP growth rate drop from 14.4% in 2010 to 9.5% in 2011. Into 2012, GDP swung down again, the Vice President (then John Mahama) was chair of EMT but nobody roped him in,” the legislator said.

“The reason is that the Finance Minister manages the economy for and on behalf of the president not the Vice President. In the cabinet set-up, in the committee system, the Vice President is not the chairman of the Economic Committee. Vice Presidents have never been.

“In fact, I should tell you that the Economic Management Team has no constitutional basis…. So, when people talk about this, it is just because they want to give the Vice President a bad name, like the proverbial dog, just give it a bad name and hang it,” he submitted.

Ghana is currently in the midst of a raging economic downturn characterised by rising prices of goods and services and depreciation of the cedi. The government’s debt has also risen to unsustainable levels.

Whilst the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has rightly shouldered much of the blame for the economic mess, there are times that Dr Bawumia is also roped in and chastised for not being able to properly run the economy despite his impeccable credentials and being head of the Economic Management Team.

Many keen political observers have noted that the Vice President does not have the powers outsiders assign to him in terms of the economy and that assertion is what the Suame MP confirmed during his speech in Parliament on December 6th, 2022.