Government has delivered 78% of manifesto promises – Bawumia
Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has strongly defended the record and achievements of the Nana Akufo-Addo-led administration, saying that, it has delivered 78% of the election promises, it made to the people.
Using a combination of graphs, tables and evidence-based presentation, he gave a tall list of achievements chalked over the past three years.
Addressing a Town Hall Meeting and Results Fair in Kumasi on Tuesday, Dr Bawumia challenged anyone with contrary figures to dispute the record produced on government’s performance, saying, “The data speaks for itself”.
He spoke about the troubled economy they inherited in 2017 – declining economic growth, high inflation rate, high interest rates, high fiscal deficit, weak and collapsing financial system, high unemployment rate, high indebtedness of the National Health Insurance Scheme and four years of power outages (Dumsor), while many parents were unable to afford their children’s school fees.
Vice President Bawumia said the NPP Government, notwithstanding the economic difficulties, faced the challenge head-on and started fixing the problems.
“We were cognizant of our many promises. In fact, at the direction of President Akufo-Addo, we put together a dashboard of manifesto promises immediately after we were declared winners of the 2016 election, and before we were sworn into office we have been using this dashboard to track our manifesto promises.”
He said the challenge was huge considering the fact that, the economy at that time could not even pay teacher and nursing trainees’ allowances.
With prudent economic management, government restored teacher and nursing trainees’ allowances, created jobs and implemented the Free Senior High School Policy.
It also rolled out the Nation Builders Corps (NABCO), Planting for Food and Jobs, One Village, One Dam, One Constituency, One Ambulance, reduced electricity prices, formalizing the economy, industrializing the economy, reducing the cost of doing business, among other ongoing initiatives.
At the same time, Dr Bawumia said, government was reducing the budget deficit and rate of borrowing.
“It seems an impossible task and our opponents were emphatic that we could not fulfill our promises.
“But we were very confident that with good economic management and by the grace of God, we could make what seemed impossible possible.
“The data and the evidence is clear that we have largely met our manifesto promises. We have delivered and are delivering on over 300 of our promises, and we are on course to do even more,” the Vice President declared.
Vice President Bawumia described the Akufo-Addo’s government first term in office as best performing government in the Fourth Republic, saying, the fundamentals of Ghana’s economy was “strong”.
Indeed, the strength of Ghana’s fundamentals was confirmed recently by Moody’s Ratings, which changed Ghana’s sovereign ratings from B3 with a stable outlook to B3 with a positive outlook.
“For the first time in over two decades, Ghana’s trade balance recorded a surplus in 2017, a larger surplus in 2018, and an even larger surplus in 2019.
“Economic growth has been restored. Growth for 2017 was 8.1 per cent, 6.8 per cent in 2018 and a projected 7.0 per cent in 2019, significantly exceeding the average sub-Saharan African growth and amongst the fastest growing economies in the world for the last three.
“The future is very bright that’s why we are asking the good people of Ghana to give Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP ‘four more to do more for you,’” Vice President Bawumia said.
Source: GNA