We Shall Overcome Present Economic Challenges – President Mahama

President John Dramani Mahama has reassured that Ghana will bounce back from its present economic challenges, just as it emerged from even more challenging periods in the past.

There is however the need for building national consensus in formulating a national development roadmap to guide the attainment and sustenance of building a more vibrant economy.

“Fellow citizens, your presence here today, will enable us to work together towards the creation of such a map,” he told participants at the ongoing National Economic Forum at Akosombo, in the Eastern Region.

The opposition New Patriotic Party is boycotting the four-day forum on the grounds of late invitation and hidden agenda by the government.

While he emphasised that “This is the time for us to come together. It’s the time for us to work together,” he said the government believed it was time to create a non-partisan platform – “a specific space within which the people of Ghana can address” government and address each other on the direction of economic policy.

We are better off dialoguing
President Mahama underscored the relevance of the forum, tracing its antecedents in 1997 and 2001 by the then respective National Democratic Congress and NPP governments, saying while those fora did not yield miraculous unanimity in approaches to dealing with the prevailing economic challenges, it proved a useful tool in planning and policy making, allowing a broad spectrum of expertise to be brought to bear on economic policy formulation.

“Those forums afforded us the opportunity to hear other voices. Those forums promoted understanding, and though we did not miraculously find unanimity, we were able to forge a consensus behind critical economic policies such as the HIPIC Initiative and Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategies, PRGS of the past decade.

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