• He also observed that perception of corruption and lack of transparency still exist
• He questioned Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta on how he is handling the economy in the coronavirus period
The corruption record of the Akufo-Addo led government and its commitment to the democratic principles of transparency and accountability have been questioned by Richard Quest, the celebrated journalist with CNN.
Richard Quest on Friday, July 2, 2021 interacted with Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta on how he is steering the country’s economy through the coronavirus pandemic.
As background information to his first question, Richard Quest recognized some of the successes chalked by the Akufo-Addo administration.
Twitter bringing its headquarters in the country was of one many strides made by the government which the CNN broadcaster took notice of.
He however noticed despite these successes, the government has been slapped with allegations of corruption and lack of transparency.
“President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo won an election with a task to fix that economy and despite the country’s long-running battle with corruption, there are encouraging signs. A few months ago, Twitter chose Ghana over Nigeria to set up its first Africa base. They also received high profile endorsement with Steve Wonder saying he is moving to Ghana to escape racial injustice in the US.
“That is the problem you have at the moment. Everybody loves Ghana. Ghana is perceived as a stable and is doing better but you still have this reputation for corruption and lack of transparency and you now have this additional issue of rebuilding this economy after COVID-19….,” Richard Quest told Ken Ofori- Atta.
Ken Ofori-Atta then went on to justify some of the things the Akufo-Addo government has done to ensure that Ghanaians are able to deal with the pandemic.
He also spoke about the progress made with the economy and how government intends to build on those gains.
Ofori-Atta told CNN that, “if you look at the economy since 2017, I mean clearly, we went through the head wings and built quite a bit of resilience before the pandemic [COVID-19]. So, when Africa’s sort of first recession and contraction of about 2% occurred, we managed to achieve 0.4% growth.”
The Finance Minister further stated, “and then the president [Akufo-Addo] employed us to put together a recovery package that we call it Ghana Cares Programme which is a GH¢100 billion programme on accord of Gross Domestic Product, looking to revitalization of the economy and also the taking off smoothly of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement; they’ve been here to create a regional hub”.
“Twitter was able to come here because of these types of aggressive outward positions that we have. So, it’s really an issue of continuing over a great business environment where Google is here, manufacturing and assembling of VW and Toyota vehicles are happening here”, he added.
