Ofori-Atta offered nothing new to address ‘FixTheCountry campaign - MP

The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta on Sunday, May 9, 2021, held a presser to assure convenors of the ‘FixTheCountry’ campaign of the government’s commitment to stabilise the economy and create better opportunities for the unemployed youth.

The Minister in his submission said the current administration was on course to modernise, digitise and formalise the economy, provide social protection for the vulnerable and create a safe and secure environment for citizens and businesses to thrive.

Among other solutions, the Minister stated that the government "For the first time in Ghana’s history, we established two Social Partnership Programmes ― one with Organised Labour and the Ghana Employers Association; the other with Faith-based Organisations (FBOs) — to provide a platform for a cohesive and trustful relationship between the partners on issues of national development."

"We implemented several digitalisation programmes to transform the economy, formalise the informal sector, and increase efficiency in public service delivery. These initiatives include the issuance of over 15 million National ID Cards, the digital addressing system for over 7 million homes, mobile money payment interoperability system, the introduction of the paperless port system, automation of driver’s license and vehicle registration, renewal of NHIS registration, land records digitisation with block-chain technology, and automation of passport application."

"We took a financial sector on the brink of collapse, cleaned it to build a more robust financial ecosystem that is well capitalised, liquid, and solvent to fund our development. By this initiative, we saved the hard-earned savings of 4.6 million depositors, 81,700 investors and protected 3,000 direct jobs,” he added.

But Dr. Clement Apaak says the Minister did not outline anything new to address the concerns raised by Ghanaians.

He challenged the government to explain to citizens what has been fixed as promised in the budget and state of the nation address.

"Presser by the Finance Minister has offered no new ways of fixing the nation, check budgets and SoNAs from 2017-2021. What govt claimed to have fixed or is fixing has not had an impact on the masses, if it did the #FixTheCountry movement wouldn’t have emerged. #FixTheCountry.”