President John Dramani Mahama has assured that government was putting in place measures to change Ghana’s economy from being dependent on export of raw materials to an industrial economy, where its natural resources would be processed.
According to the President, the long reliance on traditional exports such as cocoa, timber, gold and other minerals without processing has brought adverse effects on the economy and therefore needed to be changed.
Speaking at a grand durbar of chiefs and people of New Juaben Traditional Area on Tuesday at the Koforidua Jackson’s Park, as part of his nationwide working tour, president Mahama admitted that the economy had not been strong but government was putting measures in place to reverse the trend in no time.
President Mahama cited bauxite for instance, saying when exported in its raw state, Ghana earned only 40 dollars per ton, while a processed ton of bauxite would have earned the country 350 dollars and hoped that with the efforts being made, it would give the country a strong bargaining power at the world market.
The President mentioned emphatically that the nation needed all hands on deck to transform the economy.
He said political affiliations did not matter and that the transformation of the nation’s economy must be paramount to every aspiration.
He assured the people of the Eastern Region that all his campaign promises would be fulfilled, and that establishing a public university, a new regional hospital and construction of roads, all in the region were on course.
With the university, he disclosed that the draft bill was in Parliament awaiting approval while the Ministry of Health was putting modalities in place for the construction of a befitting regional hospital; and added that very soon he would break the grounds for those remarkable projects.
The president thanked the people for their massive support during the elections that saw him in power and assured that he would not relent in fulfilling his promises.
Earlier, the President interacted with members of the Regional House of Chiefs and cut the sod for the construction of a modern building for the house of chiefs.
The two-day tour would take the president to the Afram Plains, Kyebi and the Koforidua Polytechnic, where he would address the people and inaugurate a number of developmental projects.