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President Nana Akufo-Addo has reacted to former President John Mahama’s recent comment that implied the government was not applying "common sense" to running the country.

The flagbearer of the opposition NDC, John Dramani Mahama during one of his campaign tours in the Ketu South Constituency of the Volta Region said: “government is planning and government is common sense and that is what the NDC was doing, we were using planning and common sense”.

He also suggested that the current administration should have applied common sense in fixing the financial sector crisis rather than using GHS22 billion to “kill” nine banks and more than 400 other financial institutions which, according to him, could have been saved with just GHS9 billion.

In his speech during the NPP 2020 manifesto launch in Cape Coast, President Akufo-Addo responded; “It has been said by the NDC presidential candidate that the NPP policies lack sense. If running an emerging oil economy into the arms of the IMF because of indiscipline in the management of public finances is a sense, I’m happy that the NPP has another concept of sense.”

“If having sense means cancelling teacher trainee and nurses allowances is a sense, I’m happy that the NPP has another concept of sense.

“If having sense means recording the worst economic management statistics of modern times, the lowest rate of growth of the 50 years, I’m happy that the NPP has another concept of sense,” the President contrasted.

He continued; “Having sense in the NPP means being able to take an economy growing at 3.4 per cent to an economy that grew, on the average, for three successive years, at least, seven per cent per year before the pandemic and was rightly acknowledged as one of the best-performing economies not just in Africa but also in the world.

“Having sense in the NPP means executing the programme for Planting for Food and Jobs, which has led to the revival of Ghanaian agriculture from the doldrums of the NDC years, bringing in its wake, bumper harvest and affordable food prices in our markets and exports of significant quantities of foodstuffs to our neighbours.

“Having sense in the NPP means implementing policies, which, according to the latest Ghana Living Standards Survey, has resulted in the declining unemployment rate from 11.9 per cent in 2015 to 7.3 per cent in 2019.”

To him, he prefers the NPP's sense than to go for the logic of the NDC.

“I’m happy with and prefer the NPP’s sense,” he said.