President Akufo-Addo in a group picture with members of the Ghanaian delegation
President Akufo-Addo has reiterated his commitment to see to the successful implementation of all the promises he made to Ghanaians during the 2016 electioneering campaign, which saw him becoming president.
In spite of the messy nature of the economy he inherited from John Mahama’s erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration, he said, “I am very keen that the promises that we made to the Ghanaian people, the pledges we made about what we would do when we came into office, the people of Ghana see that we are fulfilling those promises.”
President Akufo-Addo gave this assurance when he interacted with the Ghanaian community in Doha, Qatar, United Arab Emirate (UAE) as part of his three-day official visit to that country.
According to him, the situation whereby people make promises, get into office, and then find all kinds of reasons to say they could not undertake those promises is not good for governance.
“When you commit yourself, it is because you are sure that you can do it; and all the commitments that we have made, gradually, systematically, we are beginning to realize them, because they are things we thought about long and deep in opposition, and we believed that they were the way to put our country on the road to progress and to prosperity,” he underscored.
He noted that one of the preoccupations of his government, upon the assumption of office, was to ensure the stabilization of the country’s macro-economy.
President Akufo-Addo stressed that he inherited an economy with a fiscal deficit of 9.6%, a growth rate of 3.6% – the lowest in over 20 years – widespread unemployment, dumsor (erratic power supply) and the major issue of corruption.
“So it was necessary to put the macro-economy back into shape, and I believe we have done well already. We committed ourselves to reducing the deficit from 9.6% to 6.3% this year. We are meeting that target,” he said.
He therefore described Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta as “a magician.”
President Akufo-Addo observed that out of nowhere, the finance minister had been able “to conjure money for us to finance our programmes. Today (Wednesday), he announced in parliament that we had met the deficit target that we set.”
Mr Ofori-Atta, the president added, had also been able to find money for the government to implement, within the period of 11 months, three key things namely, the ‘Free SHS’ policy, ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ and the revival of the National Health Insurance Scheme.
Stable Power Supply
Touching on the country’s power supply, President Akufo-Addo stated, “We are not going to get anywhere in industrial development which we are desperate about, if we don’t have reliable supply of power. We can’t get anywhere. Boakye Agyako, the Minister for Energy, has done a great job first of all in stabilizing the situation.
“We are beginning to forget that there was a time when we had dumsor in Ghana. The situation is now stabilizing, and in this year’s budget, we are making a proposal to the PURC to bring down electricity tariffs, to be able to stimulate industrial development.”
All of these are measures, he added, being put in place to boost the Ghanaian economy, and to serve as the platform for the country’s industrial enterprises to become more competitive.
“That is the way that we are going to create wealth in our country – if our industries are working, expanding, producing and exporting,” President Akufo-Addo noted.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent