ghananlpcommunity/ghana-gov-speeches-sentences huggingface dataset:
In response to this proclamation, some seventy (70) African-American Hollywood celebrities visited Ghana in December 2018.
The year-long campaign, being coordinated by the Ghana Tourism Authority, is expected to increase arrivals considerably.
Training across the entire tourism sector is also receiving priority.
The Hospitality Training Institute has been renovated, and re-opened in July 2018 to provide needed training in the hospitality and tourism sectors.
Under a Tourism Attractions Upgrade Project, several tourist sites, including Elmina Heritage Bay, Axim Fort St.
Antonio, Assin Manso Slave River, Tetteh Quarshie Cocoa Farm, Bunso Arboretum, Kintampo Water Falls, are undergoing upgrades.
A draft Legislative Instrument (LI) on Sites and Attractions is currently undergoing final stakeholder consultations.
This will ensure world-class standards are set and maintained at all our tourism sites and attractions.
Speaker, the greatest attraction of our country is its people.
Yes, we have castles and forts, we have water falls and dramatic mountain ranges, we have breath-taking beaches, and historical sites that reduce visitors to strong emotions, but it is the people of Ghana and our welcoming attitude that are the strongest attraction to visitors.
We should never forget that we all have a responsibility to make visitors to our country feel welcome.
In this “Year of Return”, when we have invited the world to visit, I would urge each one of us to make a special effort to make a visit to our country a memorable one.
Our music, our foods, our clothes and the quintessential akwaaba smile will make a visitor to our country come back again and again.
Mr Speaker, but there are things that many of us do that would put off any visitor from visiting our country, no matter how attractive the geography or the history might be.
I refer, especially, to some of our sanitation habits.
Mr Speaker, public resources must be channelled into ventures that generate wealth, and not spent on avoidable expenditures.
The cost of clearing and cleaning up our cities and towns after those who litter has become prohibitive.
The littering habit seems to be more predominant in the cities and urban areas, and, mercifully, largely absent in the villages.
Last year, I reiterated before you my pledge of improving sanitation in the country, and making Accra the cleanest city in Africa, by the end of my term.
There has been a significant improvement in sanitation, even though, I acknowledge, more can be done.
However, this is currently the state of play.
We have witnessed an increase in the coverage of solid waste management, from 16.6% to 53%, and, over the course of last year, thirty-five thousand, eight hundred and sixty-two (35,862) household toilets were built, as opposed to one thousand, six hundred and ninety-eight (1,698) in 2016.
We will intensify efforts at making Accra a clean city.
In 2019, apart from continuing with educating and sensitizing people, we intend to use the bye-laws to enforce cleanliness.
The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Sanitation are working together to try sanitation offences.
Persons who litter would be tried and punished, and so would those who steal litter bins from our streets.
We are launching a National Sanitation Brigade to help us carry this out, and, through this vehicle, we will not only keep our towns and cities clean, but will also provide jobs for our young people.
Once waste is properly and efficiently managed, we then can explore how to use the waste collected to advance the economy of our nation.
A cursory look around our cities and towns would show us that plastic filth is our biggest problem.
We intend to solve this problem through the internationally recognized priorities of waste: reduction first, followed by reuse recycle recovery and, lastly, disposal, which is to be avoided whenever possible.
Government has prepared a Plastics Management Policy, with the overarching aim of meeting the challenges of comprehensive plastics management.
About 82% of Ghana’s plastics waste could be readily recovered and recycled with existing technologies into value-addition products in high demand locally and within the West African region.
A vibrant recycling industry in Ghana could recover nearly one million tonnes of waste plastics from the environment and landfills annually, to be recycled into basic-need products valued at GH¢2 billion per year, creating many jobs across the economy.
Currently, extensive discussions are being concluded with investors on the most sustainable options available to rid Ghana of this plastic filth menace.
Mr Speaker, we are also tackling the problem of electronic waste head on.
On August 20, 2018, I launched the National E-waste Program to mark the commencement of two key provisions of the Hazardous and Electronic Waste Control and Management Act, Act 917.
These provisions empower the External Service Provider (SGS) to verify, assess and collect the advance recycle eco fee on all electrical and electronic equipment from all exporting countries, and also to establish a state-of-the-art recycling facility at Agbogbloshie, whose construction will begin in April.
Not only would we solve the problem of waste disposal in an environmentally-friendly manner, setting up the recycling facility will lead to the creation of over twenty thousand (20,000) direct jobs, through the establishment of associated holding centres in each regional capital and collection centres in each district.
Mr Speaker, it is unfortunate that, in 2019, we still have to revisit this topic, but, open defecation cannot be a characteristic of a country that is working to be transformed economically and to be counted amongst the developed nations of the world.
That is why it is absolutely imperative that we make a success of our One House-One-Toilet Policy.
The Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) Programme is being implemented in over four thousand, five hundred (4,500) communities in one hundred and thirty (130) districts to achieve Open Defecation Free (ODF) Communities.
Speaker, affordable and reliable energy is absolutely critical to realising our vision of economic transformation.
I am happy to announce that gas production tripled during the year, from 100 to 300 million cubic feet per day.
The Ministry of Energy is undertaking steps to remove the transmission bottlenecks, to ensure that Ghanaian gas can reach power plants located in the eastern part of the country, and I am confident that, by August this year, the situation would have been fully remedied to ensure Ghana uses locally produced gas for the bulk of its thermal power generation, saving substantial amounts of foreign exchange on imported fuels.
Government is committed to achieving an electricity generation mix that ensures diversity and security of energy supply.
For this reason, we will continue to promote the deployment of renewable energy in line with our policy target of 10% renewables in the energy mix from the current 1%.
Another justification for renewable energy is that, in spite of Ghana’s excess electricity generation capacity, we can still not achieve our universal access target because there are many Ghanaian communities, especially those on islands and lake sides, that cannot be reached through the national grid.
For example, there are currently two hundred (200) island and two thousand (2,000) lake side communities that require mini-grids from renewable sources to meet their energy needs.
To reduce government’s expenditure on utilities, and also promote the use of solar power for government and public buildings, the Ministry of Energy initiated the Solar Rooftop Programme.
The Ministry is leading by example with the installation of a 65-kilowatt solar rooftop system at its premises.
Jubilee House will also be powered, as from August this year, by solar energy, as an example to other public institutions.
In fact, government’s target is to install up to 200 megawatts of distributed solar power by 2030 in both residential and non-residential facilities in order to reduce Government’s liabilities to ECG (PDS Ghana Ltd).
Renewable energy has also become a necessary addition to our energy sector because it has increasingly become cheaper, and is key to the implementation of our international obligations under Sustainable Development Goal 7, on access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy, as well as Sustainable Development Goal 13, on urgent action to combat climate change.
There has been good news with the recent announcement by Aker Energy of one of the biggest oil finds in Africa.
Mr Speaker, this has led me to think that an NPP government must be good for Ghana.
After many, many years of our looking and almost giving up, it took an NPP government to discover oil in 2007.
In eight years of NDC administration, 13 oil block deals were signed, and not a single one was developed.
The first one signed in 2017, under my government, which was Aker, has led to the second biggest oil discovery in Africa.
Enough to make a believer of anyone, I might say.
Mr Speaker, there is no avoiding the fact that the oil industry, unfortunately, has a reputation for corruption.
Since the discovery of oil in our country, there has been heightened anxiety among the people that we do not fall into the same trap of the oil money benefitting individual officials to the detriment of the state and the general public.
On the fight against corruption in the oil industry, and to aid transparency, we have established a National Register of Contracts on which all the Petroleum Agreements signed by the Government have been published.
This provides a platform for citizens to scrutinize the oil contracts signed by government, and accords with the international call for contract transparency.
We have also passed the General Petroleum Regulations, which provide for the disclosure of beneficial ownership information of companies operating in Ghana’s oil and gas industry.
This will ensure that people do not hide in the shadows to appropriate oil blocks to themselves, at the expense of the citizens of Ghana.
The interest of major oil companies in Ghana has become dramatic.
Today, oil companies such as the American giant, ExxonMobil, and the Norwegian conglomerate, Aker, have signed petroleum exploration agreements with Ghana.
Through the launch of the “GHANA OIL AND GAS LICENSING ROUNDS 2018”, the bidding process for the allocation of new petroleum rights to prospective investors, the first such exercise in our history, other global players such as BP, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, and Total have expressed interest in coming to Ghana.
Mr Speaker, be it in the oil industry or manufacturing or retail, every day demonstrates the urgent need for our own businesses to develop and flourish.
We have put in place the mechanisms to train young entrepreneurs and to help established businesses with a stimulus package to expand their companies.
Under the Presidential Support programme, one thousand, three hundred and fifty (1,350) start-ups and small businesses have benefitted from a special government business support programme.
Beneficiaries received between ten thousand (GH¢10,000) and one hundred thousand Ghana cedis (GH¢100,000) each, at a special interest rate of 10%, instead of the average prevailing market rate of 26%.
This is designed to help grow and expand their businesses, and will create about thirty thousand (30,000) direct jobs.
Eighteen thousand (18,000) jobs have already been created under this programme.
This is the first time in Ghana’s history that there has been a deliberate, systematic and coherent national support for start-ups and small businesses.
Businesses, which benefitted, included agribusiness and agro-processing, information communication and technology, tourism and recreation, sanitation and waste management, health, food and beverages, green and ecological businesses, sports and real estate Already established businesses are also receiving help, with an amount of two hundred and thirty million Ghana cedis (GH¢230 million) being disbursed among sixteen (16) companies under the stimulus package.
This has led to the creation of eight thousand, five hundred (8,500) to ten thousand (10,000) direct and indirect jobs.
Proof, if some were needed that we are getting something right, and generating the right atmosphere to attract foreign business, has come with the announcement that three major international automobile manufacturers, Volkswagen, Nissan and Sinotruck have signed MOUs to establish assembling plants in our country.
Renault is also conducting feasibility studies on establishing an assembly plant in Ghana, as is Toyota.
We will outdoor, in March, the National Automotive Policy spelling out the terms, conditions and incentive package for participating in Ghana’s new automobile industry, which will also apply to indigenous car assembly companies.
Mr Speaker, our local textile industry has been struggling for years, and many textile companies have, indeed, gone under.
We have decided to give it a major stimulus to help put it on a strong footing.
The local textile industry has, therefore, been granted a zero-rated VAT on the supply of locally-made textiles for a period of three years.
We have put in place a tax stamp regime for both locally manufactured and imported textiles to address the challenge of pirated designs and logos in the textile trade.
The Tema Port has been designated as a Single-Entry Corridor for the importation of textile prints, with a textile taskforce in place to ensure effective compliance, and reduce, if not eliminate, smuggling of imported textiles.
A new textile import management system has been instituted, also, to control imports of textiles.
Speaker, the “One-District-One-Factory” policy has taken off, and 79 factories under the scheme are at various stages of operation or construction.
Another 35 are going through credit appraisal.
All told, there is a lot of activity going on under the scheme, and it has awoken the interest of young people to go into manufacturing business.
Under the Rural Enterprises Programme, funded by the African Development Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, 50 small-scale processing factories will be established by the end of the year in 50 districts across the country, particularly in areas where there is evidence of significant post-harvest losses.
These will be owned and managed by organized youth groups, with technical support from the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Mr Speaker, small and medium scale enterprises form the base of businesses in our country, and financing has been the bane of their operations.
MASLOC was established in 2006 to meet a critical need by providing the type of small-scale loans needed by these small-scale enterprises at reasonable rates.
Sadly, MASLOC was undermined by base political considerations and endemic corruption, and the centre was almost run down completely.
I am glad to report that MASLOC has been revamped, and is getting back to do what it was set up to do.
There has been strict adherence to credit procedures and prudent management of the credit recovery process.
These have resulted in a recovery rate of 89% of loans administered under a pilot scheme introduced in 2017.
MASLOC was given an amount of thirty-five million Ghana cedis (GH¢35 million) in October 2018 for disbursement.
This is the first time an amount of such magnitude has been given to the Centre outside of an election year.
Of the thirty-five million Ghana cedis that were received, the Centre has disbursed twenty million, five hundred and sixty-three thousand, one hundred Ghana cedis (GH¢20,563,100), with fourteen million, three hundred and seventeen thousand, two hundred Ghana cedis (GH¢14,317,200) to be disbursed for pending applications, which have been approved.
So far, 87% of the monies disbursed have gone to women, i.e.
to twenty-four thousand, five hundred and eighty-two (24,582) women.
The 2016 NPP Manifesto promised to allocate 50% of MASLOC funds to women, and we have surpassed this promise.
It has obviously been noticed that interesting things are happening at the successfully restructured MASLOC, and that is why the Centre was allocated an amount of two hundred million Ghana cedis (GH¢ 200 million) in the 2019 budget.
Such an amount is unprecedented in the history of MASLOC.
In 2019, MASLOC will give increased attention to youth start-up businesses in vegetable farming, poultry, piggery and fish farming.
Mr Speaker, the incidence of bad governance methods that almost collapsed MASLOC has, unfortunately, affected the running of many businesses generally and the financial sector in particular.
The banking sector has gone through what can only be described as a traumatic upheaval.
Again, Mr Speaker the woes of the banking sector have also been a case of long-standing bad practices that we, previously, had been unable or unwilling to deal with, which we are now having to deal with in the most painful manner.
The clean-up has cost the national treasury GH¢12.7 billion, money we can ill afford, but which was necessary to sanitise the sector, minimise job losses, and protect deposits of one million, one hundred and forty-seven thousand, three hundred and sixty-six (1,147,366) Ghanaians and their businesses and the people they employed.
The banking sector has emerged stronger from these developments, and inspired confidence in it.
In all this, I have been anxious that our local banks are helped and given as much support as possible, which has been done, but l will not be on the side of criminal behaviour if that is discovered.
I would urge that we are all patient for the investigations to be made in a calm manner.
And, while I am on the subject of rogue activities in the banking sector, it is probably the time to mention the MenzGold debacle.
This is a tragic phenomenon that appears to have occurred in plain sight, and affected a lot of people, in spite of warnings from official institutions.
As the authorities try to unravel the intricacies of what happened, I admonish all Ghanaians to learn the necessary lessons for the future, even as State institutions work to bring a resolution to the matter, and those who are seen to have indulged in criminal activities, are brought to justice.
Last week, I inaugurated the Presidential Financial Stability Advisory Council, an inter-institutional consultative coordination body, which groups together all the regulators of our financial system, and whose purpose is to advise the President on the measures to be taken to preserve the stability of the financial system.
The existence of such a body would have forestalled the emergence of the Menzgold saga, and will make it difficult, in future, for any such scheme to get off the ground.
Mr Speaker, during times like these of banking and business upheavals, agriculture appears even more attractive.
It is more predictable and the soil and plants and animals far more reliable than sharp figures.
The past two years have shown that, when a government takes deliberate measures to support agriculture, it pays healthy dividends.
There has been food and for the first time in a long while, we had more than we needed.
It was not that long ago that Ghana was in the humiliating position of having to import maize from her landlocked Sahelian neighbours and plantain from Cote d’Ivoire.
Thanks to the programme for “Planting for Food and Jobs”, admirably organised by that outstanding Minister for Agriculture, Dr.
Owusu Afriyie Akoto, this House stands informed, that, in 2018, exports of food crops such as cassava, rice, yellow and white maize, soya, plantain, cowpea and yam were made FROM Ghana to Burkina Faso, Togo and Cote d’Ivoire in considerable quantities.
We had a bumper harvest of produce, and, last year, we did not import a single grain of maize.
Based on the successes chalked in 2017 and then in 2018, the Ministry took giant strides to scale up the Planting for Food and Jobs Campaign in 2019, and to introduce new modules of the programme.
Four of such new modules are the Greenhouse Villages programme, the Planting for Export and Rural Development (PERD) programme, the Rearing for Food and Jobs (RFJ) campaign and Mechanisation Centers programme.
We are hoping that success will lead to a fundamental change in attitudes towards farming practices, and the sector will be truly transformed.
Bumper harvests and increased food production, in general, would be the norm, and not a surprise once in a while.
Extension services will be expanded, and our farmers will have the confidence to know that theirs is a worthwhile business from which they can and will get healthy remuneration and respect.
Mr Speaker, this year the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development plans to implement a flagship programme - “ Aquaculture for Food and Jobs” (AFJ) – complementary to the “Planting for Food and Jobs” initiative – to reinvigorate and boost the aquaculture industry.
Priority will be given to youth entrepreneurs, distressed farmers, second cycle and public institutions to set up and operate fish farms across the country.
The programme will offer participating individuals and groups the requisite inputs, such as cages, fingerlings, fish feed and training, to be able to establish their own farms.
The AFJ will be implemented for three years, from 2019 to 2021, in collaboration with the Nation Builders Corps (NABCO) and the School Feeding Programme.
It is expected to create seven thousand (7,000) jobs, and add an extra thirty-three thousand, six hundred and twenty-eight (33,628) metric tonnes of fish to our domestic fish production.
Piloting of the AFJ has already started at the James Camp Prison.
For traditional fishing, Government will collaborate with the private sector to facilitate the provision of five thousand (5,000) outboard motors and fifty-five thousand, two hundred and fifty (55,250) bales of prescribed fishing gears through the fisheries associations.
To promote the effective and efficient distribution of premix fuel, we will continue to use the prem
Vice President, Greater Accra Regional Minister, Minister for Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, Minister for Inner City and Zongo Development, Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, National Chief Imam, Zongo Chiefs, Ulama, Jama!
I greet you in the name of Islam, Salam Alaikum!
We give thanks and praise to the Almighty for guiding us through the month of Ramadan.
I send hearty congratulations to the Muslim Ummah in Ghana and around the world for a successful completion of the fast of Ramadan, even under the very difficult and trying circumstances occasioned by the Coronavirus pandemic, which has, inter alia, curtailed the conventional celebration of the Eid at Black Star Square.
However, I commend the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation for stepping up to the plate, and making it possible, through virtual means, to celebrate this year’s Eid, just as it did in facilitating the virtual celebration of this year’s May Day.
These are the proper uses of a public broadcasting network.
This year’s Ramadan fast will remain unique in Islamic history as one that was observed without the usual activities and buzz that come with the Ramadan fast.
Muslims have had to fast without the traditional iftar, tafsir, tarawih and tahajjud prayers.
I know that, for many of you, this has been a very difficult sacrifice to make, since these activities, in the consciousness of all Muslims, cloak the month of Ramadan in sanctity and holiness.
And, so, I salute you for these sacrifices that you have made for our collective good.
More importantly, you have made these sacrifices, specifically, to save human lives.
Indeed, the Qur’an states that, and I quote, “…if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the whole of humanity…” (Q:5: 32).
Your adherence to the safety protocols that government put in place to fight the virus has, therefore, saved many lives, for which we are all grateful.