Why Akufo-Addo is so confident in his finance minister

Without any room for doubts, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been doing a pretty good job ensuring that he absorbs as much of the public arsenals thrown at his appointees, rather than have them take fall alone.

Like he recently said in response to calls for him to conduct a reshuffle of his ministers, the buck stops with him and when he deems it fit, he will take the necessary actions to ensure that the right things are done, and for the good of the country.

“When I am satisfied or someone is doing his work well or not doing his work well, I will act on it. If I am satisfied that the output is still strong, I will know what to do,” he said in an interview.

Evidently, and on countless times, President Akufo-Addo has continued to reiterate how confident he is in his appointees.

And one of such appointees has been the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, who has, without much debate, been the most under-fire appointee of the president.

With numbers no longer a thing to fall on when it comes to the people who have asked for his head, the president, as always, has continually come out to give his defense to the minister.

As some have argued, and as was captured in this earlier article by GhanaWeb, it could well also be because of some of the factors like the one that has to do with Ken Ofori-Atta being a cousin of the president. And axing a brother like that from political office might just be an unspoken statement of your failure, and people doubt Akufo-Addo is ready for any such thing.

But even more evidently, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo recently indicated why he is so confident in the minister.

In a September 2, 2022, interview on the first day of his tour of the Central Region, the president stressed that despite public discontent towards Ken Ofori-Atta, he believes in his competencies.

According to the president, amid the calls for the minister's sacking, critics are failing to acknowledge the role Ofori-Atta played prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He also referenced the role the minister played in helping Ghana exit an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme that the government inherited when it came into office in 2017.

“This same Finance Minister who people are calling for his blood is the very man who took us very successfully out of the IMF programme and helped us produce the 7 percent rates of growth that we have before the COVID.

“I believe that he has the same determination to work us out of this crisis as he showed at the beginning of our government,” the president added.

It becomes even clearer that President Nana Akufo-Addo trusts in the work of his minister so much that he is unfazed about what critics say.

It will also be recalled that on July 1, 2022, the president ordered Ken Ofori-Atta, via a statement issued under the name of the Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, to present an economic rescue programme to the IMF.

On the back of that, a team from the Fund, led by Carlo Sdralevich, visited Ghana between July 6 and 13, meeting with relevant stakeholders.

Reports indicate that government is seeking US$3 billion from the fund to help stabilize the economy. Government has serially blamed the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war for the economic headaches.

Galloping inflation and a weak Cedi have piled pressure on government to act to avert an economic meltdown, with calls for Ofori-Atta coming from all over the political spectrum, including from within the party.





EA/KPE