I will appoint 60 ministers when elected president - Joe Ghartey

Former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Joe Ghartey, who is also looking to become the NPP's flagbearer, has stated that he will appoint only 60 ministers when elected as president of Ghana.

He made this known in an interview with Umara Sanda on Citi FM's Eyewitness News, monitored by GhanaWeb.

According to him, his government will have a maximum of sixty ministers.

This was in response to a question that described President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s first term government of 111 ministers as bloated.

Disagreeing with the suggestion, Joe Ghartey said that in the first term, President Akufo-Addo’s philosophy of the size of government led to 9% growth in the economy.

He explained further that when he was Attorney General in President Kufuor’s era, he asked the president why he was creating a Ministry of Aviation when he was asked to draft the legal document that would create the new ministry.

He said the president answered that one of the ways a government can focus on a particular sector is to isolate a sector and create a ministry to oversee it.

Joe Ghartey further stated that this was clearly what President Akufo-Addo had in mind when, for example, he created the Ministry of Railways Development.

He added that had that ministry remained as part of the Ministry of Transport, it may not have received the attention it is receiving under President Akufo-Addo.

The former 2nd Deputy Speaker of Parliament also said that since independence, no era had seen so much construction in the railways sector, with over 200kms currently under construction.

However, the NPP presidential aspirant said he has a different philosophy and would have a much smaller government because of current circumstances.

He said emphatically that the total number of ministers in his government would not exceed 60, which would include 19 cabinet ministers and 16 regional ministers.

NYA/BOG