No life improvement in 8yrs – Analyst

Policy Analyst Dr Lloyd Amoah has said he is unimpressed by the State of the Nation Address by President John Dramani Mahama as government has failed in key areas that will improve the lives of the masses.

“Purely on the basis of our lives, purely on the basis of national budget, it is hard to make the case that our existence has improved in the past…eight years,” he told Ekow Mensah-Shalders on Class 91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show Friday February 26.

Dr Amoah believes parading a few individuals in parliament – as the president did – as evidence of various government achievements, does not necessarily show a success of policy intervention towards an improvement in the quality of lives of the citizenry.

He cited the dwindling growth in agriculture as a key failure by the government, in view of the fact that majority of citizens, especially in the rural areas, are either farmers or involved in agriculture in some form.

Dr Amoah said would have been glad if the president had addressed issues that would help reverse the downward trend in the sector over the past few years.

To him, a growth in the agricultural sector is a key metric, which affects lives and other aspects of the economy, but the country has not made significant gains in that area.

“Agriculture, for example, recorded 0.04 growth, and that is a disaster. It is a bad performance, historically in our national lives. Majority of people in the hinterlands and rural areas are peasant farmers and with agriculture on a bad trajectory, you can’t ameliorate that with a spectacle,” he noted.