Ghana has witnessed positive growth – President Mahama

President John Dramani Mahama

President John Dramani Mahama






Accra, Feb. 21, GNA – Ghana’s economy has  consistently witnessed a positive growth rate over a period of more than two decades, President John Dramani Mahama  observed on Thursday.

‘This positive performance was taken to a whole new level in the year 2011 when our country registered one of the highest growth rates in the world – a massive 14.4 per cent GDP growth rate,’ President Mahama stated when he delivered his first State of the Nation Address as an elected President.

President Mahama who was addressing the sixth Parliament of the fourth Republic, spelt out his vision during the first term of his presidency which included working to sustain the economic growth rate at a minimum of eight per cent “in line with our goal of moving our country from a lower middle-income status to the upper middle-income bracket.”

He said the challenge facing Ghana now was a misalignment of the expenditure categories in the Budget, namely personal emoluments (i.e., wages, salaries and allowances), goods and services (including debt service), and investment or capital expenditure.

He said the expansion of the wage bill had reached a point where certain critical investments in the budgetary allocation of capital expenditure was being squeezed out.

‘Unless we tackle this issue decisively, we may soon reach a time where nothing will be left to provide the much-needed roads, bridges, ports, schools, clinics and water infrastructure we need to develop our economy,’ he said.

President Mahama said the Government was taking the difficult but necessary measures to address the serious problems of misalignment.

‘The National Petroleum Authority recently announced adjustments in the prices of petroleum products to realign the distortions in the pricing of petroleum products.

 ‘Our primary concern for the poor and vulnerable has necessitated a widening of mitigation measures, such as the introduction of solar lanterns, expansion of life-line threshold on energy for poor households and deepening social protection initiatives to cover a wider net of poor households to cushion them from the effects of these price increases’.

President Mahama said government’s partnership with the private sector had brought about accelerated growth and development of the economy, adding that Ghana improved from the 92nd position in 2009 to the 63rd in 2012 on the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business Index’.

He said the government had taken a decisive step to locate private sector coordination under the Office of the President, and designated a Minister of State in the Presidency to coordinate and supervise Private-sector initiatives. In this effort, government will play a facilitating role for private sector development.

 
 
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GNA