We’ve delivered 78% of our promises – Bawumia

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has strongly defended the records and achievements of the Nana Akufo-Addo administration since it assumed office in January 2017.

Using a combination of graphs, tables and evidence-based presentations, Dr Bawumia outlined a long list of achievements he said the Akufo-Addo administration has chalked based on its 2016 manifesto promises and challenged anyone to produce any facts to the contrary.

“The data speaks for itself,” Dr Bawumia declared when he addressed participants at the Government Townhall Meeting and Results Fair underway in Kumasi, Ashanti Region, on Tuesday, 11 February 2020.

Taking the audience through the challenges the nation faced when the Akufo-Addo administration took office, including declining economic growth, high inflation rate, high-interest rates, high fiscal deficit, a weak and collapsing financial system, high unemployment, a health insurance scheme on the verge of collapse, four years of 'dumsor' with its costs, and many parents unable to afford school fees for their children, Dr Bawumia said the NPP government had faced the challenges head-on and had delivered 78% of its manifesto promises.

“Notwithstanding the difficult economy we inherited, we had to get on with it and start to fix the problems. We were cognisant of our many promises. In fact, at the direction of President Akufo-Addo, we put together a dashboard of manifesto promises immediately after we were declared winners of the 2016 election, and before we were sworn into office. We have been using this dashboard to track our manifesto promises since”, the Vice-President revealed.

“The challenge was huge. How could an economy that could not pay even teacher and nursing training allowances, suddenly deliver lower taxes, restore teacher and nursing training allowances, create jobs, implement free senior high school education, NABCo, Planting for Food and Jobs, One Village-One Dam, One Constituency-One Ambulance, reduce electricity prices, formalise the economy, industrialising the economy, reducing the cost of doing business, etc., while at the same time reducing the budget deficit and the rate of borrowing? It seemed an impossible task and our opponents were emphatic that we could not fulfill our promises. But we were very confident that with good economic management and by the grace of God, we could make what seemed impossible possible.

“The data and the evidence are clear that we have largely met our manifesto promises. We have delivered and are delivering on over 300 of our promises, and we are on course to do even more,” he declared.

Dr Bawumia described the fundamentals of Ghana’s economy as “strong”, insisting “the data shows that Ghana’s macroeconomic fundamentals are strong. Indeed, the strength of Ghana’s fundamentals was confirmed recently by Moody’s Ratings which changed Ghana’s sovereign ratings from B3 with a stable outlook to B3 with a positive outlook. This is unprecedented for an election year.

“For the first time in over two decades, Ghana’s trade balance recorded a surplus in 2017, a larger surplus in 2018, and an even larger surplus in 2019.

“Economic growth has been restored. Growth for 2017 was 8.1%, 6.8% in 2018 and a projected 7.0% in 2019, significantly exceeding the average sub-Saharan African (SSA) growth and amongst some of the fastest-growing economies in the world for the last three years.

“In the history of the Fourth Republic, Nana Akufo-Addo has the best performance for any first-term government since 1992. All the worst performances happened under the NDC which holds the record for first, second and third-worst performances.

“The future is very bright. That is why we are asking the good people of Ghana to give Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP ‘four more to do more for you’”.