Prez. Akufo-Addo calls Finance Minister “Magician”

• Posted on November 16, 2017
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has reiterated the commitment of his government to fulfilling all the promises made to the people of Ghana, in the run-up to the December 2016 elections.

According to President Akufo-Addo, despite the difficult circumstances he inherited, his administration, this year, has begun to put in place policies and programmes for the realization of his government’s programme.

“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, the people of Ghana see that we are fulfilling those promises. It is important for trust and governance, it is important for trust and politicians, that they should be seen to be people of their word,” he said.

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 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 added.

President Akufo-Addo made this known on Wednesday, 15th November, 2017, when he interacted with the Ghanaian community resident in Doha, Qatar, as part of his 3-day official visit to that country.

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 noted 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’, 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.

Describing the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta as “a magician as far as I am concerned”, President Akufo-Addo noted that, out of nowhere, 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 things, namely the Free SHS Policy, the Programme for Planting for Food and Jobs and the revival of the National Health Insurance Scheme.

Stable power supply

Touching on the country’s power supply, the President stated that “we are not going to get anywhere in the industrial development which we are desperate about if we don’t have reliable supply of power. We can’t get anywhere. Boakye Agyarko, the Minister for Energy, has done a great job first of all in stabilizing 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 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, are 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.

-peacefm