(A speech he delivered at the Ghana Economic Forum 2020 Rebuilding Economic Resilience and Self Sufficiency Beyond Covid-19

While COVID-19 has wreaked socioeconomic under the able leadership of our President and his team, we have demonstrated through this crisis that we are resilient as a people. Ghana has relatively managed the COVID-19 pandemic well and our economy is defying the global trend to achieve a positive GDP growth rate in 2020.

While our political and economic track record appear good in comparison to our regional peers, there is much more we can do. Our aspirations handed down to us from our forebears set us on a path to build a nation of Freedom and Justice. That means to create a free and prosperous nation that guarantees opportunities for all persons to develop to their fullest potential, live healthy and fulfilling lives; and contribute fully to national development. These aspirations are affirmed in the preamble of the 1992 Constitution, which enjoins us “to establish a government which shall secure for ourselves and posterity the blessings of liberty, equality of opportunity and prosperity”.

While we have come far, there is still a long road to travel in order to get to our destination. We must continue with the investment we are making in education to develop our people, build and expand our infrastructure around transportation, health, information and communication and create the enabling environment for businesses to thrive. These actions will open the country and support the private sector with speedy access to market, inputs and relevant labour. Most skilled labour, today, are concentrated in Accra and some part of the country.

We can only change this when people know that they will not be disadvantaged if they reside in any part of the country. Confidence in our financial services has been restored and we must continue to ensure that availability and access to credit does not abort an otherwise laudable business project. These are examples of areas we should focus on to rebuild our economy in the short to medium term. In the long term if we must have a resilient and sustaining economy, I would suggest three priorities that we cannot neglect.

First, to achieve our desired goals we would require a deliberate development plan that we all, as a people must work towards in unity. Today, our short to medium term plans are largely driven by the intent in the manifestos of political parties. The danger with the current practice is that good intentions and initiatives are sometimes abandoned when the party that introduced those initiatives leaves government.