President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has rebuffed accusations his government has been reckless in its borrowing and spending.
The government, he said, has spent the money on very urgent things including building roads and schools, training young people, and equipping them to face a competitive world.
“Considering the amount of work that still needs to be done on the state of our roads, the bridges that have to be built, considering the number of classrooms that need to be built, the furniture and equipment needs at all stages of education, considering the number of children who should be in school and are not, considering the number of towns and villages that still do not have access to potable water, I daresay no one can suggest we have over-borrowed or spent recklessly,” he said.
According to the President, he has been in a hurry to get things done that includes the massive developments in agriculture, education, health, irrigation, roads, rails, ports, airports, sea defense, digitization, social protection programmes, industrialization, and tourism.
The government, he said, can justifiably be proud of the many things it has managed to do in the past six years.
“As I go around the country, I hear the pleas for roads, schools, and hospitals, and as the rainy season comes I wish, as every other Ghanaian does, that we would have built more drains than we have. And I wish we had the resources to do more.”
Delivering the Message on the State of the Nation on Wednesday 8th March, 2023 in Parliament, President Akufo-Addo stated the debts that the administration is servicing were not only contracted during the period of his government.
He expressed pride at the amount of work that the government has done, especially in the road sector, which constitutes the largest number of questions asked in the House by members of Parliament.
According to him, a large amount of the money that the government borrowed is for road construction, and questions whether the construction of roads should stop.
“Mr. Speaker, I would like to state categorically that this Government has built more roads than any government in the history of the 4th Republic, and Mr. Speaker, the details of all these roads are attached in the annex to this Message.”
“I have done so because, last year, when I made a similar pronouncement, I was met with howls and gasps of incredulity from the Minority benches, and so I thought it appropriate, this time, to present it as an annex to the Statement, which will be part of Hansard.”
The President enumerated some of the achievements of his NPP administration beyond the road construction that include:
• implemented successfully a National Identification System with the Ghana card;
• constructed more railways than any other government in the Fourth Republic;
• established the Zongo Development Fund to address the needs of Zongo and inner-city communities; and under their auspices, we have constructed more infrastructure in the Zongo Communities than any other government in the Fourth Republic;
• constructed more NCA-licensed fibre optic cable than any other government in the fourth republic (93% of total);
• increased the proportion of the population with access to toilet facilities from 33% to 59%;
• increased the number of public libraries from 61 from independence until 2017 to 115 in 2022;
• provided more equipment (vehicles, ammunition, etc) to security services than any other government in the Fourth Republic;
• we have successfully implemented the digital address system;
• improved significantly the financing of governance and anti-corruption MDAs like the Ministry of Justice and Office of the Attorney General, NCCE, CHRAJ, EOCO etc;
• implemented One District, One Factory Initiative. In four years, 106 companies are in operation under 1D1F. 148 factories under construction. This is the largest expansion of that sector since independence;
• constructed more fish landing sites than any other government in the Fourth Republic;
• established Africa’s first national-scale electronic pharmacy platform;
• provided free Wifi to 700 senior high schools, 46 Colleges of Education, 260 district education offices, and an initial successful pilot of 13 public universities;
• introduced drones in the delivery of critical medicine, vaccines, and blood to people in remote parts of the country, and today, Ghana has the largest medical drone delivery service in the world with six Zipline Distribution Centres in Omenako, Mpanya, Vobsi, Sefwi Wiawso, Kete Krachi, and Anum; and
• overseen an improvement in revenue collection, with the introduction of an e-VAT and e-Invoicing System. For example, figures from nineteen (19) taxpaying companies onboarded unto the e-Vat system revealed total recorded monthly sales increasing from two hundred and twenty-two million cedis (GH¢222 million) in November 2021 to seven hundred and twenty million cedis (GH¢720 million) in November 2022. Again, in December 2021, total monthly sales of two hundred and eighty-four million cedis (GH¢284 million) also saw a huge increase to one billion cedis (GH¢1 billion) in December 2022.
President Akufo-Addo stressed the evidence of how state funds have been used to improve Ghanaian society is spread all over the country.
No district or constituency, he said, has been left out but stressed there are many Ghanaians who will disagree and say there is nothing to show for all the funds at the government’s disposal.