Akufo-Addo was ‘selective’ – Fiifi Kwetey

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo conveniently selected areas that suited his agenda and highlighted them in his maiden State of the Nation Address to parliament on Tuesday February 21, Fiifi Kwetey, Member of Parliament for Ketu South, has said.

According to him, the president was partisan in the address and also failed to paint a holistic picture of the real state of the nation in his address.

Speaking in an interview with Emefa Apawu on Class 91.3FM’s 505 programme after the president’s address, Mr Kwetey said: “He talked about the huge debt in the country but did not talk about the massive infrastructure that the loans were used to put up in the country, which is going to become very important for him in the economic growth and economic expansion that the country wants. So you can see that he was very selective in many ways, he tried very hard to create a worse scenario.

“To be honest with you, apart from saying that it was rather selective and basically pick-and-choose in order to create a worst case scenario as far as the previous government is concerned, he obviously hasn’t really availed himself to the real things that are ahead of him. We are talking of a government that has obviously made huge promises, for example, to be able to deliver the reduction in taxes, promises in the region of making job creation enhanced, and when I was listening to the job creation bit about agriculture going to be a key driver as far as job creation is concerned, I am like: ‘are you for real?’

“Everybody in the world knows that when you talk about jobs, you are talking about manufacturing because that is what you use to create jobs. Agriculture, when it gets modernised and efficient, you actually reduce the numbers, you don’t actually need more numbers when you are getting an efficient and modernised agriculture, you actually have a reduction in numbers.

“If you want to look at numbers, then you are looking at the value chain and that moves more into industrialisation and service. For you to think that primary agriculture is what you are going to deliver on jobs in Ghana, it tells you that not a very thorough analysis is going on and I find it very sad.”