The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has reaffirmed his commitment to a number of policy directives for key sectors of the economy on which his vision for Ghana will be driven.
Speaking with the Ghanaian Community in Switzerland, on Monday, March 20, 2017, on the sidelines of the 5th edition of the Africa CEO Forum, the President indicated that the creation of new paradigm shift that focuses on building “a Ghana beyond aid” will be his main focus.
“We can build a Ghana which is no longer dependent on handouts and charity. For well-meaning people to be able to say that we, from our resources, with our own intelligence, can mobilise public action to be able to confront the issues and develop effectively,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo noted further that if the ambitious agenda of social and economic reform is going to succeed, a lot will be premised on leadership.
Despite a budget that contains a number of tax cuts, the President was optimistic that, Ghana’s revenue target will be achieved, because of a more vigorous mobilization of revenue which involves the sealing of the loopholes and revenue leakages.
President Akufo-Addo also noted that, “we have decided to provide a stimulus package to the tune of US$100million to local industries that are in distressed states, assist new enterprises to grow in the country”, adding that “this is part of the desire to grow the economy as rapidly as possible.”
He continued, “We are doing so not just for the purposes of relief but also to provide a stimulus for the Ghanaian private sector, allowing them to hold on to more money and betting on their capacity to use that money to grow our economy”.
He indicated that collectively, his government’s interventions will “seek to address the difficulties that our people have, provide a platform for growing the economy and a recognizing the need at all stages of our national development to insist on certain basic demands of equity and social justice in Ghana.”
On education, the President maintained that second cycle education should be part of the broader nomenclature of basic education.
“I think we should create the circumstance where every Ghanaian child up to the ages of at least seventeen or eighteen will be able to go to school without it being a burden on the parent,” he said.
According to him, this will allow Ghana to widen the net in ensuring that all available talents in our country have access to the new knowledge that is driving successful economies elsewhere.
Touching on health, the President enumerated a plethora of problems plaguing the performance of the National Health Insurance Scheme, but pledged that with the appointment of Kwaku Agyeman-Manu as Health Minister, the problems of health financing will be mitigated to provide sustainable health service.
“If indeed we maintain this attitude towards development, we extend them with freeing our private sector and counting on the sense of enterprise, creativity and innovation that is within our people to drive the economy at the same time, with certain basic and fundamental needs of everybody in the population met, access to healthcare, education, we will be able to square the circle and have hopefully, that inclusive approach to national development,” he stressed.
