Akufo-Addo has created 2 million jobs in the formal sector – Bawumia

Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has said the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government has created two million jobs in the formal since it assumed power in 2016.

According to him, unemployment was a major challenge for young people when the NPP took office hence a major action was required.

“We have created jobs, especially for the youth. Another major challenge we sought to address was the hopelessness and despair that the lack of employment opportunities under the previous NDC government had plunged our youth into.

"The human cost on the number of able-bodied of educated youth of this country by the economic mismanagement of the NDC government had grown to become a national security threat. Nothing is more dehumanizing and more frustrating for young people than being jobless. We did not run away from the challenge, we took the bull by the horn and in four years, we have created over two million jobs in the formal sector,” the Vice President said in a lecture in Accra Thursday.

He stressed: “As a result of our industrialized transformation, nearly 19,000 direct jobs have been created by the 76 operating IDIF firms and helping it to restart operation, Anglogold Ashanti, Obuasi mines have employed over 4, 000 people. We have revived companies like the Ghana Publishing Company as well as Ghana Post”.

Dr Bawumia also noted: “In four years, we have stabilised the economy. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, which has impacted all economies in the world, we have reduced inflation, and inflation continues to fall. We have doubled economic growth in the first three years, we reduced the exchange rate depreciation. The exchange rate depreciation has been relatively stable. Ghana has recorded the lowest rate of depreciation [of the cedi] in the last 28 years in 2020.”

“Notwithstanding COVID and its implications and notwithstanding that this is an election year, Ghana in 2020 has seen the lowest depreciation since 1992?.