Fact-check: 3 claims by President Nana Addo during State of the Nation Address

Fact-check: 3 claims by President Nana Addo during State of the Nation Address

- The president made a lot of claims at the State of the Nation's Address

- Some of which were true and some were false

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The State of the Nation's address was delivered to Parliament, on Thursday, February 20, 2020, to highlight the key things done by his administration.

The president made a lot of claims. Some of which were true and some were false.

A fact check carried out by GhanaFact has revealed that some of the claims made by the president were very true as there were data from other sources to back the claims made by the president.

On the other hand, some of the claims made by the president had some distorted facts which made the claims false.

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First and foremost, the president claimed that our neighboring country, Nigeria had for the past five months closed its land borders to trade with the excuse of curbing smuggling.

In August 2019, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the closure of its land border with Benin to imported goods.

Subsequently, on October 14, the initial partial border closure was expanded into total shutdown.

This situation has caused a lot of traders to lament on how difficult it is for them to get their wares and goods to their target customers. This claim by the president is true.

Another claim made by the president is that the current inflation was at its lowest level (7.8% in January 2020) since 1992 under his administration. This claim is also true as data from the Ghana Statistical Service and the World Bank prove so.

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World Bank data showed the lowest level of inflation since 1992 is not 7.8% but rather 7.12% recorded in 2012. This, however, is contrary to the Ghana Statistical Service data on inflation rate for 2012, which pegs it at 8.8%, making the claim by the President true.

Akufo-Addo also claimed that for three years in a row, the country has had a fiscal deficit below 5% of GDP. In 2016, the IMF said overall fiscal deficit (on a cash basis) deteriorated to an estimated 9% of GDP or 6.8% of rebased GDP. Subsequently, in 2017, fiscal deficit recorded was 6% of GDP or 4.7% of rebased GDP.

According to the government, in 2018 and 2019 the fiscal deficit (on a cash basis) recorded were 3.8% and 4.8% respectively. However, it is worthy of note that the computation by government excluded the cost of the one-off financial sector bailout.

This claim is rated false and the government needs to explain the reasoning behind its decision to exclude the financial sector cost in computing the fiscal deficit figures or it would amount to cherry-picking data for a parochial gain.

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Meanwhile, President Akufo-Addo on Thursday, February 20, 2020, delivered the state of the nation's address which touched on the various issues in the various sectors of the economy.

He touched on other issues from health, the banking sector clean-up, tourism, education and what have you.

READ ALSO: SONA 2020: Key highlights from Akufo-Addo's address

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Source: YEN.com.gh

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