ghananlpcommunity/ghana-gov-speeches-sentences huggingface dataset:
i Tiscal Deficit, Arrears, Interest Payment i Fellow Ghanaians, indiscipline in government expenditure which reached unprecedented levels resulting in huge fiscal deficit of about 11% of GDP and the excessive arreass in 2013 is one of the reasons why our currency is suffering.
How much is still owed to Cocobod, SSNIT, GETFund, DACF, NHIS, Road Fund, Road contractors, and Parliament among others?
We expected the President to have proposed remedial measures to stop the huge unbudgeted : expenditures by the Ministries, departments and agencies, including government machinery.
Instead; he went-to-catalogne huge projecis some of which are not budged for in-2014-The —-.
-~ conventional wisdom is “one bitten twice shy” but the President wants Ghanaians to be three times bitten.
Undoubtedly, the huge borrowings translate into high debt servicing and the payment of huge interest every year.
If loans that are contracted are invested in ventures that could yield good dividends that position the country to be able to pay back in due time, nobody should worry.
However, where it is difficult to account for monies borrowed, as the case in many of the project loans suggests, then the good people of this country should have cause to worry, That is why Ghanaians should worry about the GHg¢6.2billion which may, in all likelihood, be required to service our debt for 2014 even though there is very little to show for these loans.
It is incredulous that the response of the President to the massive borrowing, as he stated at Kibi the other Wednesday, is that he will continue to borrow.
Regardless of how such borrowing imperils i the economy and ultimately affect the living-standards of the people negatively, Mr.
It is clear that the President and his economic management team simply do not understand the repercussions of their unbridied appetite for borrowing.
In the meantime, whiles the President insists that he will continue to borrow, his Finance Minister on 1% April 2014 came to Parliament 10 tell Ghanaians that from now onwards, there is a moratorium on new loans, Or was it an April Fools day joke?
Perhaps yes, otherwise is it not paradoxical that on the day that the Minister was promising a freeze on new loans, on that same day the Minister was seeking approval for a $300m loan for military logistics and another huge amount for the construction of a new seaport.
A team of confusionists leading the country!
DEPRECYATION OF THE CEDI It is important to remind President John Mahama of what he said in 2008 when he was the running mate to the then NDC Presidential candidate John Evans Atta-Mills.
Ife accused President Kufuor’s NPP government of excessive borrowing amounting to $4.7billion and accused them of making life unbearable with their massive borrowing.
Today life is far worse under John Mahama.
The difficulties facing the economy are reflecting in the weakening of the local currency, the Ghana Cedi.
Government is quick to point to the Single Spine Salary Structure as the key cause citing ridiculous figures of between 75% - 85% of total revenue generated, depending on the colour of the person making the statement, as the portion of revenue which is taken up by the SSSS.
Yet the truth is that government expenditure on salaries does not exceed 60% of revenue.
Indeed, last Tuesday, April 2004 the Minister of Finance admitted that for 2013 the percentage was 57% of revenue.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, speaking at a forum in London about four weeks ago conceded that they got the caloulations wrong at the very outset of the implementation of the single spine salary scheme.
When did they discover this?
Was it before or after the bold declaration by the then Minister responsible for Employment in November 2010 that “government is ready with the meal and every Department or agency that is ready should bring its plate to be served™.
Questions that must be asked include the following: what is the projection of our international reserves by year ending 2014 having decreased from $5.35billion to $5.21billion as at September 2013 which provided for 2.9 months of import cover (Par.
74 of 2014 Budget).
According to the Governor of the Bank of Ghana as at February 2014 it had decreased further to $4.88billion which provides for 2.7months of import cover.
More frighteningly, the net reserves are estimated at 2weeks of import cover.
Is the reserve big enough to provide muscle to the Bunk of Ghana to intervene to shore-up the cedi?
What has been the effect of the knee-jerk measures announced by the Bank of Ghana to slow down the depreciation of the cedi, such that the Ghana Cedi continues to cascade downwards with the passage of every day?
The President ought to have opened up on this.
Statistics indicate that over 95 per cent of Ghanaians are religious and believe in the power of prayers.
Most belicvers today however acknowledge that the era of manna falling from heaven is over and that today, as the Book of Proverbs provides, “we eat from our labour”.
Christians believe that “whatever a man soweth is what he reapeth”.
If you sow thorns you reap thorns.
If we manage our economy well we will teap good harvest and so if we pray we must pray to the Good Lord to provide our leaders with knowledge and wisdom to manage well and not for God to help us reap sugar cane when we sow cassava.
It is in this vein that we must lament the fate of Ghana for, at the time when some developing countries are planning to visit the moon and other planets, the managers of our economy postulate that we are having difficulties because we are approaching end times; or that the causes of our socio-economic problems could be found in the springing up of high-rise buildings or that our economic woes and the depreciation of the cedi are attributable to the works of dwarfs and spirits.
That is the level of intellectual incompetence of the people at the helm of affairs..... Mr.
President the fault is not in our stars, it is in the level of understanding of the real causes of these difficulties by the managers of the economy.
INFLATION Over the past five years, government’s propaganda machine has been in overdrive in cheering government for achieving single digit inflation instead of confronting the practical challenges facing Ghanaians.
Since August 2013 the rate of inflation has continued to rise from 11.5% to 14.0% in January 2014 far higher than the government’s own upper band target of 11.5%.
To stem the inflationary spiral the Bank of Ghana recently increased the policy rate by 200 basis point.
At the same time as the “yos men” and “cheer leaders” of government had become loudest the Bank of Ghana’s Monetary Policy Committee came out with reports indicating the increasing levels of interest rates.
For instance, the February 2013 report and the 2014 budget (par.
63) indicated the following developments in interest rates: e The 91-day Treasury bill rose from 10.7 per cent in December 2011 to 22.4 per cent in June 2012 and to 23.1 per cent in December 2012.
As of September 2013, the 91-day Treasury bill rate was 23.1 per cent.
Last Thursday, the Bank of Ghana revealed that as at February 2014 the 91-day bill had risen to 23.5 per cent.
o The 182-day bill increased from 11.1 per cent in December 2011 to 22.0 per cent in June and further increased to 22.7 per cent in December 2012.
As of September 2013, the 182-day Treasury bill rate was 22.9 per cent.
As of September 2013 the 182-day Treasury bill rate was 22.9 per cent.
It dipped to 18.7% as of December 2013 but has risen by February 2014 to 21.2 per cent.
o The l-year fixed not went up from 11.3 per cent in December 2011 to 22 per cent in June and then to 22.9 per cent in December 2012.
As at December 2013 the 1-year fixed note had declined to 17.0% per cent.
As at February 2014 it has risen again to 22.5 per cent.
The question we posed then was, how come that a time inflation was supposedly dropping into single digits, interest rates were doubling over a period of just twelve months.
It was strange that at a time that inflation was in single digit lending rates had shot up to over 28%.
Tt was for that reason that we have always urged government to stop the cheap single digit inflation propaganda, stop the unbridled, often unnecessary and unreasonable borrowing from the domestic market and let interest rates climb down so that businesses can borrow, grow and create jobs.
Sad to say that the President has categorically stated that his government will borrow more.
The future of industry can only be bleak.
OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLE, 1t would be recalled, ladies and gentlemen, that in seconding the motion for adjournment after the President’s delivery, the Minority Leader said that many of the things His Fxcellency had recounted were a rehash of the 2013 message.
The rehash in itself would not be bad if the purpose was to restate to account for progress in those matters.
Not so, the President’s statement.
In many cases when he restated the old matters he made them appear as if they were completely new things.
Indeed, there are some of them though which had either not started at all or whose implementation had become so saddled by sheer incompetence that in order to avoid embarrassment, the President did not even mention them in his speech.
EDUCATION Fellow Ghanaians, if we intend to put people first as the President categorically stated then Education should be a paramount concern.
The President at Page 4 of his speech posited that his focus is on quality, access and affordability.
The issues of ‘access’ and ‘affordability” arecovered 1 Article 38(1) & (2) of "the constitutton, — ThePresidernt spoke about the constitutional requirement of providing “free, compulsory and universal basic education within 10 years after the coming into being of the constitution”.
Well, as is usual, the President got it wrong, The time span for the provision of free, compulsory and universal basic education (FCUBE) is 12 years after the coming into being of the constitution and not 10 years and that is captured in Article 38(2).
Indeed, the constitution in Article 38(3) urges the state “to provide equal and balanced access to secondary and other appropriate pre-university education, and equal access to university or equivalent education, with emphasis on science and technology™; as well as (b) “a free adult literacy programme, and a fiee vocational training, rehabilitation and vesettlement of disabled persons,” and (¢) “life-long education” “subject to the availability of resources”.
Clearly, therefore, a greater burden is imposed on the state.
It is not only for the provision of fiee secondary education.
One hopes the President appreciates that.
It is also important to remind the President that when the constitution under Article 25(1) makes provision for making “secondary education progressively fiee i.e.
available and accessible to all by every appropriate means”, that secondary education includes technical and vocational institutions.
It is sad to statc that because vocational institutes come under the purview of the ministry of manpower which ministry is itself not well resourced, vocational institutes have become orphaned establishments.
The time has come to place all vocational institutes under the Ministry of Education so that they could also benefit from the resources available to GETFund.
SCHOOLS UNDER TREES For three years, since 2012 the NDC has insisted that they have constructed over 1,700 basic schools representing about 40% of the backlog of 4,300 basic schools that needed to be constructed (vef.
2010, 2011, 2012 Budget Statements & Pg.
15 of 2012 Manifesto).
We have always insisted and indeed stated in our True State of the Nation Address, 2013 that out of the total they claim to have constructed about 700 had been initialed between 2007 — 2008 by the | Kufuor administration and that what they have done is about 950 over 4 years.
For four years they have been in denial of this fact.
Indeed, their 2012 manifesto has repeated that lie.
The good thing is that for the first time they have admitted that over 5 years they build only 983 units (Ref.
par.644 of 2014 budget).
Truth cannot be eternally suppressed!
The President now states that the total number of schools under trees is or was 2,269 and not 4,300!
And that what number is yet to be constructed is 1,286, The nation should prepare itself for another lie in purported achievement next year.
Well we are told that for 2014 the Ministry of Education plans to construct 190 6-unit classroom blocks under the “schools under trees” project.
At this snail pace, in spite of all the noise, Mr.
President, when are we going to complete the construction of the remaining 2,600 or, even by your own revised figures, 1,286 schools, given that you have just two more years to end your term?
In 2013 the President said 42 per cent of “Schools Under Trees” had been eliminated e {pg 14902013 budget).
In 2014 he said he has eliminated 43 3:per-cent~{pgl26-0£-2044- - - budget) translating into 1.3 per cent improvement over one year.
That is some achievement, Mr.
President!
QUALITY EDUCATION As part of improving the quality of education, the President in 2013 assured to integrate Kindergarten (KG) education into the mainstream system.
Between 2005 and 2008 the Kufuor administration started this effort and included a 2-unit KG block in the basic schools that were constructed at the time.
Teachers with the requisite skills were to be trained.
Since 2009 the Mills-Mahama government abandoned the idea of integrating X.G education into the mainstream.
That is why it was heartwarming hearing the President’s assurance in 2013, yet nothing has happened since then.
The new structures that were awarded on contract in 2013 still did not have KG components and the training of such teachers to cater for the kindergarten were not mentioned.
For 2014 the President did not offer any clue about the status of the integration effort.
The 2008 NDC manifesto stated that the school-feeding program, which the Mills- Mahama administration inherited would be expanded to cover all basic schools in 4 years i.e.
beginning 2009.
That promise had, by the end of 2012 not materialized.
In 2013 the President shifled the goal post and promised that they would expand the school-feeding programme to all public_basic schools in rural communities, significantly, this time, not any longer to all basic schools in the country.
Even that, how many public basic schools in how mauy rural communities which had no school-feeding before 2013 benefitted in 2013?
No indication because, apparently, nothing happened.
The President assured to bring the Bill for the university in the Eastern Region to Parliament in the third quarter of 2013.
No such bill came and no such bill has come.
Whilst we recognize that the President’s promise to have one state university established in each region is in fulfillment of Article 38(1) which provides: “The State shall provide educational facilities at all levels and in all the regions of Ghana...”, great care must be taken not to create any mushroom institutions whose products may turn out to be misfits or not be recognized by the establishment because of low standards in those institutions.
Compatriots, the regions that do not have state universities have good reason to expect the establishment of such institutions in their respective regions, however, we must learn useful lessons from our sister country, Nigeria, which at the height of the oil boom established universities in all the then 32 states of the federation.
Today many of them have become glorified polytechnics and post-secondary institutions of no proper description and some of them keep changing their names as if the mere change of name may change the fortunes of those institutions.
Let us first ensure that the two recently established universities in the Volta and Brong Ahafo regions are put on sound pedestals.
We should not turn the establishment of public ot state universities into political gamesmanship or fashion parade, Mr.
We appreciate the concern of Mr, President to ensure an increase in the number of trained teachers.
However, we disagree with his prescription to ameliorate the situation.
Cancelling the scholarship to teacher-trainees limits government’s authority to bond and keep the trainees in the classroom.
There ought to be a rethink of this policy, We need to further expand the facilities in the 38 colleges to rapidly increase intake of the students than we have done before.
At a point in our national life when it was thought we had rolled out sufficient number of teachers from the 4- year post-elementary and the 3-year Post-Secondary institutions, many of the Iraining Colleges in existence at the time were converted into secondary schools.
Not many of them after all these years have been able to match the standards of the traditional secondary schools.
Ultimately, we may have to increase the number of Training Colleges to match our increasing population.
And may we state for the records that there are too many reports of newly passed out teachers who are not being paid on timely basis, sometimes, regrettably, for more than one year, It provides no motivation for the newly-trained teacher and the Ministry has to find a lasting solution.
HEALTH On health the President stated that his government has a “vision to extend quality health care to all our people...This involves the construction of new facilities and the training of health personnel”.
That is a declaration of good intent.
When health personnel are trained they have to attend to patients, There have been too many hiccups in the relationship between the members of the Ghana Medical Association and government.
In the past, there have been fiictions but previous governments had always had a way to deal with the practitioners.
Increasingly, the relationship between the Association and this government appears to be worsening thereby negatively affecting the health of the people.
The President is the Chief Executive of this country and he must devise the appropriate conflict-resolution mechanism to deal with this as it seems the posturing of the negotiators have not been the best required to deal with the problems.
One would have thought that the President would have spared a thought for this perennial problem: it is affecting the state of our health and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.
CAPITATION PROGRAM IN ASHANTI Ladies and gentlemen, facilitating financial access to health care to Ghanaians has since independence been a major headache for our government.
In the “cash and carry” regime out-of- pocket expenditure of health carc by the sick was catastrophic and that is why Ghanaians heaved a sigh of relief when the National Health Insurance Scheme was introduced by the Kufuor administration and became operational in 2003.
In 2000 before the introduction of the NHIS out-of-pocket expenditure as a percentage of Total Health Expenditure was 47%.
Between 2005 - 2008 the national out-of-pocket expenditure ebbed to 33.7%.
Today, in 2013 the national average is 36% per capita health expenditure.
implementations of the NIIS introduced a capitation regime in Ashanti Region.
The capitation system is Ashanti has dramatically shot up the out-of-pocket expenditure of residents in Ashanti Region to 64%, neaily two fold or 100% increase over the national average.
This means that the people in Ashanti Region are being impoverished and this cannot continue.
Besides, a National Health Insurance scheme is supposed to put all subscribers in one loop and that is why the practice of the capitation system only in the Ashanti region, is discriminatory and hence offends Article 17(1)(2) & (4)(d) of the national conslitution.
President, if the capitation is worth its introduction, it must be extended to all regions of the country.
However, if, as we have surmised, it is negative in its effect and will further burden the people as it has done in Ashanti, then it must be terminated forthwith.
KINTAMPO RURAL HEALTH TRAINING INSTITUTE Last year the President said that his government was going to transform the Kintampo Rural Health Training Institute into a untversity college.
Nothing has thus far happened and the President found it unworthy to report on this to the nation.
HIV/AIDS Last year the President said that 220,000 persons who have been identified as persons with HIV/AIDS were to be enrolled on NIHIS free of charge.
We did not hear of any effort pursuant to fhis in 2014.
What is the status of this otherwise well-infentioned project the President found it unworthy to report to the nation?
Last year the President indicated that 625,000 expectant mothers were targeted to be tested for HIV/AIDS last year.
How many were tested?
Were there any challenges?
promising President, no show on that one too, 11 REGIQNAL HOSPITALS/CHIPS COMPOUND Last year President Mahama promised of the construction of 1,600 CHIPS compounds in 4 years.
The budget statement for 2013 provided for 19 of the compounds and for 2014, 25 have been provided for, How it is intended to construct the remaining 1,556 in 2 years only God knows!
In the meantime, the nation awaits how much the President and his Ministers® voluntary pay cut has yielded and when they intend to construct the other compounds additional to the 1600. i Last year, the President pledged to commence work on 12 District hospitals and also begin wotk on some regional hospitals.
According to the President it was in fulfillment of his Putting People First agenda.
Ladies and gentlemen, government has decided to construct 600-bed capacity Regional _..._Jmspilals_'EhALis_lmldablLbut_the_natian_sh@uld._alwys_beuefn_fxomfvaluemfmxmoney_m—¥ whatever enterprise we commit ourselves to and that is why it is very worrying what is coming up as the cost of the upgrading and rehabilitation of the Ridge Hospital in Accra.
We are told that the Hospital when completed will cost the nation US$6,757 per square meter thereby making it the most expensive hospital in the world.
Crown Agents who were employed by the state to do due diligence has advised that the facility could be built at a cost of $162million and yet we are having to do it at over $305million?
That we could make a minimum saving of about $142million.
Crown Agents further advised that the Contract Agreement is “likely to expose the Ministry of Health to an unacceptable level of risk”.
They concluded that the proposed price of $305million “cannot offer value for money to the tax-payers of Ghana”, We in the NPP parliamentary caucus insist this matter has o be brought back to Parliament for further interrogation.
There will have to be a motion of rescission to allow for a reconsideration of the matter.
This agreement cannot be allowed to stand.
The nation is being short-changed and Parliament must rise up in unison to confront this apparent malfeasance.
What is even more worrying is the fact that the MOH after their attention had been drawn to this impropriety went into negotiations with the contactor, Bouygues Batiment Tnternational.
Arising out of the so-called negotiations the MOH requested a 10% discount — which would have amounted to $30million even though Crown Agents had stated a downward review of the contract sum by $142million.
The Ministry itself in entering into the negotiation had proposed a review downwards by $88.25million from the initial $142 million proposed by Crown Agents.
At the end of the supposed negotiation, the Ministry agreed with the contractor to a 6% discount!
That amounts to $27million.
Even that the contractor indicated that thexe would not be any refund but that it will be applied to additional works!
M. President, that is the state of our nation!
FOOD AND AGRIC 12 Last year, we said the true state of food, agriculture and cocoa subsector is one of stagnation.
Real growth in agriculture consistently spiraled downwards from 7.4% in 2008 to 0.8% in 2011 and even today, when government is making noise about a resurrection, it is a mere 3.4%.
The main reason for the decline of agriculture has been the decline of the share of agriculture in total budgetary allocation.
From 3.0% in 2009 it noticeably climbed down to 1.9% in 2012.
1In 2013 it was 1.07%.