Government Is Committed to Seeing Ghana Work Again - President Assures

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Wednesday as part of his 3-day official visit to Doha, Qatar, interacted with the Ghanaian community, reassuring them of Government's commitment to for-filling all its campaign promises it made to Ghanaian people.

According to the President, despite the difficult circumstances his government inherited, it had begun implementing policies and programmes to restore the economy on the right path in order to engender growth.

"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 come into office, Ghanaians see that we are fulfilling those promises.

The President insisted that in order for the country's fledgling democracy and governance to be entrenched, it was imperative, "politicians do what they promise they will do" in other to gain the trust of the people.

President Akufo-Addo indicated that the era where people make promises, get into office, and then find all kinds of reasons to say they cannot undertake those promises was 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 added.

The preoccupation of his government after assuming office, the President noted, was to ensure the stabilization of the country's macro-economy- an economy with a fiscal deficit of 9.6%, a growth rate of 3.6%, the lowest in over 20 years, widespread unemployment, 'dumsor', and the major issue of corruption.

"So it was necessary to put the macro-economy back in 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.

President Akufo-Addo disclosed that the Finance Minister has been able "to conjure money for us to finance our programs. Today (Wednesday), he announced in Parliament that we had met the deficit target that we set."

The Finance Minister, the President added, has also been able to find money for the Akufo-Addo government to implement, within the period of 11 months, three key strategic policies- Free SHS Policy, Planting for Food and Jobs program and the revival of the National Health Insurance Scheme.

Stable power supply

Commenting on the country's power supply, President Akufo-Addo stated that the country would go nowhere with its industrialisation agenda "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 stabilising the situation."

The President continued, "We are beginning to forget that there was a time when we had 'dumsor' in Ghana. The situation is now stabilising, 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 measures, the President retorted, were being put in place to boost the Ghanaian economy, and also 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.

Source: ISD (Rex Mainoo Yeboah)

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