It took bold, decisive and visionary leadership of President Akufo-Addo to turn around the fortunes of a country whose economy was in disarray, Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, Deputy Campaign Manager, New Patriotic Party (NPP), has said.
Dr Abdul-Hamid made these remarks at the party’s weekly media briefing in Accra on Monday, September 14.
The NPP’s weekly media encounter provides an opportunity to explain key issues in its 2020 manifesto and offer perspectives on the best leader to lead the country going into the December 7 polls.
Dr Abdul-Hamid said Ghana required a stable and steady hands to steer it from the troubled waters due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which had caused health and socio-economic havoc globally.
He indicated that President Akufo-Addo had shown exemplary leadership in managing the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, therefore Ghanaians could entrust the future of the nation into his hands going into the December elections.
“A leadership of conviction is what it takes to steer a country out of troubled waters.
“Ghanaians can see clearly that there has been a leader of purpose and conviction in the management of Covid-19,” Dr Abdul-Hamid pointed out.
” We have taken the new comfort for granted and have forgotten that it has not always been like this.
“It has taken the vision and conviction of President Akufo-Addo to restore dignity and sanity to our country and its people,” he emphasised.
Dr Abdul-Hamid, also the Minister for Inner City and Zongo Development, recounted the three years in which the National Democratic Congress government under John Dramani Mahama plunged the nation into darkness (dumsor) that collapsed many businesses.
He said due to the poor management of the economy by the NDC government, it could not raise funds to purchase fuel to power generators, thereby leading the nation into prolonged power outages and Ghanaians had to bear its negative rippling effects.
“In 2015, there were 868 hours, 44 minutes of power outages. In 2016, there were 320 hours, 27 minutes of power outages.
”So they (NDC government ) said they resolved the power crisis before leaving office, how come there was over 800 hours of power outages?…is power outages tantamount to resolving dumsor? Dr Abdul-Hamid asked.
On economic management, Dr Abdul-Hamid said the Akufo-Addo-led Administration had outperformed the NDC government on many fronts, explaining that, the NPP government moved the annual growth rates from abysmally low of 3.6% in 2016 to an average of seven per cent.
Also, the ruling government moved the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita growth from 1.6% to 4.7% under Akufo-Addo’s administration.
Dr Abdul-Hamid noted that the NPP government moved the average annual growth rates of exports from 1.1 per cent to 14.9 per cent, while the year-on-year inflation declined from 15.4% in 2016 to a single digit before the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic.
More also, the annual manufacturing value-added growth rates of 2.1% inched up to an average of 6.7%.
The remarkable achievements on the economy, he said, had created fiscal space to implement various social interventions or reliefs during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr Abdul-Hamid added that government showed empathy and compassion by introducing medical drone delivery project that supplied essential medical products to hard-to-reach communities.
So far, government had collaborated with Zipline Technologies based in California to establish drone distribution centres in Ghana.
Some of the distribution centres are located at Omenako in the Eastern Region, Walewale in the North East Region, Mampong in the Ashanti Region and Sefwi-Wiawso in the Western North Region.
To date, 79,800 lifesaving medical products had been delivered to 947 health facilities and conveyed 2,500 COVID-19 samples to the testing centres.