Dr Mahamadu Bawumia, head of the Economic Management Team of the incoming New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, has promised to remove tax obstacles to greatly lessen the plight of people.
The Vice President-elect, who disclosed this recently in an interview with Joy Fm, an Accra-based radio station, bemoaned the low growth of Ghana’s economy.
“We want to see the economy growing. Right now we’re growing around three percent. We used to grow in the big days around 2011 about 14 percent when the oil was coming, 8 percent coming down but we’re now at 3 percent. You need to increase the growth rate of the economy. And the way you are going to do it of course is to make sure that the private sector is energized.
“And so we are going to see a transformation even in mindset that you’re going to build the most business-friendly and the most people-friendly economy that you can, so that we encourage both local and foreign investment. We’ll remove the obstacles and bring down the tax burden on people. We will make sure that the health service is better managed and people can actually get better and quality access to healthcare.”
He also pledged to protect the country’s business environment, adding that the business climate would influence the enterprising prospects of the private sector. According to the former Deputy Bank of Ghana governor, there were clear cut policies set by the incoming administration to reposition the country as the most business and people-friendly economy in Africa. He mentioned that an Akufo-Addo led administration would evolve policies that would expand and transform Ghana’s economy. “I want to also make sure that Nana Akufo-Addo’s call that we should have no village that has water problem in the next two years be realized. And we believe for example that the $1 million per constituency each year, the equivalent which is GH¢4 million a year per constituency, if the constituencies identify those needs and the executing agencies address them, we should not really have water problem.
“This one-village-one-dam promise, we should realize it, so that we can get the agriculture sector moving. Because if you’re going to transform this economy and you don’t transform agriculture, then you have done nothing. So we are going to see a major focus on agriculture so that we can begin the process of transformation. We also want to see jobs being created and move the economy from focus on taxation to focus on production.”
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