There was a purpose to Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia dedicating 33 percent of his address at the recent townhall meeting in Kumasi just to the macroeconomy, the Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has said.
Speaking on The Point of View on Citi TV, Mr. Oppong Nkrumah explained that this was to stress the efforts put into this foundation aspect of the economy.
“One of the first things you need to do is to check the macro foundation of the country and ensure that if you inherited things at a time the macro-fiscal situation was abysmal, you restore or you bolster or maintain stability,” the Minister explained.
“It is upon that stability we are going to build our entire programming… It was strategic for us to spend some time on the macros that we inherited and what we have done in the last three years and two months to bring the macro to a stable point and to bolster this macro,” he added.
Mr. Oppong Nkrumah also said the focus on the macroeconomy was “deliberate to set a certain a foundation, show where we have come from, where we are and what remains to complete.”
Amid concerns over the minimal attention paid to infrastructure, the Minister also noted that the next town hall meeting “will focus squarely on infrastructure”.
Ghana’s economic growth is projected to increase to 7.6 percent in 2019 with on-oil growth expected to accelerate to 6%.
Inflation is expected to remain within the Central Bank’s target range of 6-10 percent over the medium term.
But the pace of fiscal consolidation is expected to slow in 2019 and the overall fiscal deficit is projected at 4.5 percent of GDP in 2019 and, in the medium term, it will remain within fiscal rule ceiling of 5 percent of GDP, per the World Bank.
The purpose of the townhall meeting was to account for the promises made by the Akufo-Addo administration in its 2016 manifesto.
Vice President Bawumia held that the Akufo-Addo administration has fulfilled 78 percent of its 2016 manifesto promises in his presentation.
“In all, we made 388 promises in our manifesto. The most recent validation exercise at the end of January 2019 shows that we had delivered or are delivering on 303, 78 percent of the promises,” Dr. Bawumia said.
He stated that the government has so far delivered 114 of its promises while 189 further promises were in the process of being fulfilled.
The general purpose of the townhall meetings the state is embarking on is to provide a platform for the government to account for its stewardship to the people of Ghana.