ghananlpcommunity/ghana-gov-speeches-sentences huggingface dataset:
Each of these changes has been heralded by expectations of better governance leading to tangible improvements in the socio-economic conditions of our people.
The NPP government came into office in January 2017 on the back of mouthwatering promises of almost instant transformation of our country amid countless slogans.
President Akufo-Addo did promise to change Ghana in eighteen (18) months if voted for.
Yes, he promised to turnaround the fortunes of Ghana and create opportunities for all and take care of everyone in 18 months.
A significant number of our citizens associated the promises with good and noble intentions.
In return, and despite our best efforts, the Ghanaian people offered the NPP a clear mandate to steer the affairs of our dear country.
An assessment of our current conditions shows that what is happening now bears very little or no resemblance to what was promised.
There is a sharp disparity between promise and practice.
Today, most Ghanaians feel they were hoodwinked, and this is manifesting in their personal livelihood and their daily struggles.
Perhaps, the most defining challenge of our time is making the economy work for everybody.
Over the last several months, our political space and societal reaction has been dominated by discussions on the challenges with introducing more taxation.
These conversations have been against the backdrop of unparalleled cronyism and nepotism, breaches of the basic tenets of conflict of interest, transparency and accountable governance, and misplaced spending priorities by the President and his inner circle.
On top of these is the subjugation of independent constitutional bodies to the whims and caprices of the President and his cronies.
The painful epiphany is that in Ghana today, the frustrations of the Ghanaian people are at an all-time high.
We are well and truly at a crossroads!
A crossroads that is acutely complicated by the doubt and the fear experienced by the next generations, that they face a future that carries no expectation of success in their lives.
For most Ghanaians, the feeling of despondency and hopelessness is real and personal.
It is exacerbated by a dangerous trend of growing inequality and lack of upward social and economic mobility in addition to a calculated effort at constraining social justice.
Interestingly, the condescending responses from government officials to public complaints have often accentuated the frustration and anger of the people.
A government bereft of ideas has resorted to incarceration of critical voices, name calling of the citizens, and unfair categorisation of the labour force and huge numbers of unemployed youth as lazy and underserving.
Worse of all, the government has been using chaotic shouts and insincere technical analysis laden with dubious comparisons and outright untruths to manage the narratives.
Another worrying trend is the bastardisation of independent constitutional bodies, obfuscating their objectivity and introducing deliberate constraints on their ability to act independently and in accordance with their mandate.
This deliberate strategy has resulted in heavily politically coloured and conflicted persons assuming positions within such institutions, alongside the swift dismissal of persons who have dared to act in an independent and fair manner.
The Domelevo’s of our time.
The cumulative effect of these travesties on this crossroads that Ghana has reached, is unparalleled shambolism and lack of substantive accountability in the management of national affairs.
ECONOMIC MISMANAGEMENT AND HARDSHIPS On the economic front, Nana Addo and the NPP pledged to transform Ghana within 18 months, grow our economy at double digit, reduce borrowing, ensure fiscal discipline, bring down the cost of living, lower taxes and protect the public purse.
They promised to move Ghana “from taxation to production.”
In effect, none of these has been achieved.
Instead, Ghanaians have been subjected to excruciating hardships and deprivation resulting directly from the mismanagement of the economy by a government that lacks the humility to accept responsibility, and the capacity to appropriately diagnose the root causes of the challenges that have brought us here.
Rather, they constantly seek to impose on us, their version of the economic reality – denying that food prices have gone up; insisting that the business climate is favourable; virulently protesting the evidence that their investments in meaningful capital expenditure is insignificant; and ignoring glaring evidence of unprecedented levels of corruption and breaches of internationally acclaimed standards of social justice.
This government contests even the most basic and glaring set of facts.
This should never have been the case for a government that has been fortunate to receive far more resources in the last five years than almost all governments before them under the fourth republic, put together.
At the last reckoning, over GH¢ 500 billion had been available to them through taxes, grants, borrowing and other sources of revenue.
No government in our recent history has been that fortunate.
Despite this fortune, today, the Ghanaian economy ranks among the worst managed in the world.
It is characterized by unsustainable public debt due to an unprecedented fiscal deficit, comparatively high and still rising inflation, a rapidly depreciating currency, spiraling cost of doing business, ever rising cost of living, high levels of corruption, abuse of civil and human liberties, and a general loss of investor confidence.
Simply put, our country is on the verge of bankruptcy.
In spite of the firm promise to reduce borrowing, this government has increased our public debt to almost GH¢ 380 billion as of the end of the first quarter of 2022.
This is more than three times the debt of all governments since the days of Osagyefo Dr.
Kwame Nkrumah up to January 2017.
A direct consequence of this astronomical borrowing is that our debt service obligation per annum has increased by 500% from GH¢10 billion in 2016 to about GH¢50 billion now.
We are at great risk of defaulting on our debt repayments unless something drastic is done.
To be clear, despite the heavy politicisation of debt by the current administration while in opposition, the real problem we face is not just because of the daunting large size of the debt value.
Rather it is the stark reality that these huge levels of borrowing have not gone into infrastructure and capital investment but have been applied, largely, to consumption, and in some cases even misapplied.
This heavy borrowing has not been met by a commensurate and significant improvement in the size of the economy to ease repayment of the debt in future.
My brothers and sisters, an important and yet very disturbing variable, often ignored in our national discourse about the debt situation, is the corresponding ballooning of government indebtedness to local businesses and other statutory bodies including SOEs.
These issues must occupy an important space within national discourse because our estimation is that government’s liabilities to local businesses and other stakeholders exceed GHC30 billion.
Arising directly from the excessive borrowing to fund consumption related expenditure is the harsh truth that, more than half of what government collects in taxes is used to service debt with the remainder going almost exclusively into public sector wages.
This has created self-inflicted rigidities that leave very little space for investment in other important areas of the economy.
The effect of this, is that government is unable to meet its spending obligations in the most critical sectors of the economy on which the livelihoods of millions of our people depend.
It is little wonder therefore that out of a total of annual collection of GH¢ 2.1 billion under NHIL, as at end 2021 only GH¢ 127 million (about 6%) had been released to the Authority.
This is stifling the ability of health care providers in the private and public sectors to provide adequate care for the mass of our people.
My brothers and sisters, in the hands of a more responsible and prudent administration, the resources that have been available to this administration, should have resulted in quantum leaps in the standard of living of Ghanaians and we should have recorded major progress as a nation.
After inheriting a stable economy that was programmed and poised for rapid growth from early 2017, this government has squandered its way into a ditch from which it has become impossible to emerge without imposing even deeper hardships and suffering on Ghanaians.
The minimum expectation was that the NPP government will build on the strong foundation that had been bequeathed them and achieve incremental progress over what they met.
They have instead carried out a demolition exercise of that foundation and left our economy in quicksand, sinking at an alarming rate.
However, now we know, that responsibility and prudence are not concepts that appear to be appreciated by this government.
As we speak, the cash crunch arising out of the rigidities in the economy is having a devastating toll on almost all sectors of our national life.
Take the education sector for instance.
At the basic level, Capitation grants have been in arrears for nearly a year.
Textbooks have not been supplied to basic school pupils for three straight years At the SHS level, Lengthy delays in the release of funds have crippled the Free SHS program compelling key stakeholders like CHASS and GNAT to issue ultimatums to government There have been widespread reports of food shortages and nutrition deficient, poor quality food in schools across the country and, The academic calendar has become erratic due to non-availability of funds to run the schools At the tertiary level, UTAG recently ended a protracted strike action to call on government to honour its commitment on salary rationalization and better conditions of service.
The UTAG strike severely undermined teaching and learning on our various campuses College of Education students have spent more time at home than in school because of the lack of funds and; Trainee allowances have been in arrears for several months amidst threats by school authorities to shift the cost of feeding unto students in the absence of timely release of funds by government.
The government’s mismanagement of the GETFund has not helped matters in the education sector.
Similar liquidity challenges permeate all sectors of the economy.
Elsewhere, the District Assemblies Common Fund still stands in arrears of several quarters – endangering our accumulated mileage in local government administration.
LEAP beneficiaries who depend on a very meagre quarterly stipends for survival have also in recent times been denied access to these payments for many months, condemning them to intense and perilous hardships.
As I said earlier, NHIS service providers are owed several months arrears and are sparingly paid for their service.
This is due to the illegal diversion or misapplication of attributable funds.
Related to this is the reckless collateralisation of various funds to satisfy current consumption needs, and worse of all is the government’s express desire to collateralise more of such funds: They have collateralized ESLA till 2035, They have collateralized almost GH¢10 billion of GETFUND revenue through the 7-year Daakye bond and After mortgaging all the family property, they are desirous of selling off the remaining family cutlery by collateralizing our mineral Revenue through the dubious Agyapa Deal.
And it is expected that they are in the process of collateralising the revenues from the recently implemented E-levy.
Countrymen and women, yesterday at the May Day address, the President stated that it is not possible to remove taxes off petroleum products because it will result in an inability to pay public sector wages.
What he did not tell workers was that some of those taxes cannot be removed because they have been collateralized and the money has already been spent.
ESLA when it was introduced had a 5-year lifespan to pay down legacy energy sector debts.
Today ESLA cannot be removed as a petroleum tax because this government has spent the money upfront and has collateralised ESLA till 2035.
This entirely unwholesome practice of concealing debt through the collateralization of statutory funds for the contraction of loans must be curtailed.
Hidden debts have never helped anyone let alone a nation.
Hidden debts will catch up with you as it has the effect of increasing the public debt while creating a false sense of security because those debts ostensibly sit on the books of state-owned enterprises or special purpose vehicles.
For example, whereas the Bank of Ghana in its latest Summary of Economic and Financial Data pegs our public debt at GHS 351.8 billon with a debt to GDP ratio of 80.1% at the end of 2021, the actual debt stood at GH¢362 billion when you factor into the equation, debts sitting in the names of GETFund, ESLA, and Sinohydro.
Thankfully, the strong will of the people, civil society and the NDC legislators applied the brakes to the Agyapa Deal.
We must be determined to defeat the Agyapa Deal if they resurrect it – This can only be the actions of an ‘Agya boni’ and not an ‘Agya pa’.
This grim economic situation has inevitably caught the attention of the global investor community and rating agencies leading to a total loss of confidence in our economy.
Due to this loss of confidence – confirmed by our worst ever downgrade from reputable rating agencies, such as Fitch and Moody’s – we have been shut out of the international bond market since October last year and are set to remain shut out for the whole of 2022 unless the economic outlook improves significantly.
The resulting panic reaction – from the grim economic reality, the mixed and conflicting messages and outright untruths from government actors – has led to significant capital flight by businesses and international actors within our domestic bond market.
And has complicated confidence in an already precarious banking sector that suffered the misfortune of the politically motivated collapse of some of our locally owned banks and financial institutions.
It is estimated that about US$200 million in capital flight occurred in January 2022 alone and the Central bank lost about US$687.6 million in net international reserves between November and December 2021.
This also accounts for the steep depreciation of the cedi since the beginning of this year.
Based on this trend and the absence of a credible and innovative plan to stem its fall, some Financial Institutions and analysts have projected that the cedi would end 2022 at GHS 8 or above to the dollar.
And almost GH¢ 10 or above to the pound sterling, with fuel prices likely to exceed the GH¢ 10 mark.
Another devastating consequence of the massive fall of the cedi is that it would cause a significant increase in our public debt even without further borrowing.
This also means debt servicing will increase beyond the budgeted amount and worsen the rigidities that exist in the 2022 budget.
Moreover, inflation has risen from 8% in March 2021 to 15.7% in February 2022 and to 19.4% in March 2022 – the highest in 13 years, since 2009.
There is a genuine concern that inflation could rise even further when the passthrough effect of fuel price increases among others starts to take hold.
This coupled with taxes are fast eroding the disposable incomes of households and has made life simply unbearable for majority of Ghanaians.
Compounding the economic hardships, is the ever-looming danger posed by the youth bulge – the unemployment crisis.
Data from the Ghana Statistical Service indicates that our nation is not only experiencing a rise in inflation, but also an all-time high unemployment rate of 13.4 %.
This means millions of young people are wasting away their most productive years in abject disillusionment as the Akufo-Addo and Bawumia government continues to pay lip service to the tragic unemployment menace.
Unemployment is leading to social deviance with a significant uptick in armed robbery, kidnapping, fraud, scamming and ritual murders.
Millions of Ghanaian youth with higher education, are trapped in the situation of a permanent purgatory with no clear indication that they can obtain gainful employment before they turn 60 years and retire from unemployment.
Yet the President continues to fritter away the taxpayer’s precious money on luxurious chartered flight and other wasteful engagements.
The resort to ad hoc measures has failed to address the problem – once again, it bears saying that Ghana is at a crossroads – and this current administration has no credible solution at hand.
We proposed a number of initiatives that are still very much the solutions Ghana should implement to help tackle the problem of unemployment – the one million Edwuma Pa Jobs Creation Plan, and the free TVET combined with the National Apprenticeship Programme as contained in our 2020 manifesto.
I repeat that Government can draw on them for implementation because we can create an average of 250,000 jobs every year for the young people of Ghana as we make Ghana a 24-hour economy – three shifts of 8-hours each a day.
We must and the NDC will always support the private sector in various forms to enable them grow and expand their earnings and job openings.
A stimulus package, like what we provided to pharmaceutical manufacturing companies in the past must be rolled out to other processing and manufacturing sectors.
Our vision behind the establishment of the Ghana EXIM Bank and the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund should not be lost.
LEADERSHIP THAT TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY In times of anguish and deep national crisis as we are presently witnessing, a convincing and credible response is required from leadership.
The constitutional order we chose for ourselves three decades ago has the immutable principle of accountability as one of its most enduring pillars.
Accountability requires those who have the privilege to lead, to periodically render an account of their stewardship.
Since 1993, every President of Ghana, including myself have delivered the message on the state of the nation to Parliament.
It is important for our democracy, which the framers of our Constitution envisaged as the occasion on which the President delivers to the people – the governed – a truthful, principled, and transparent appraisal of the state of the nation, its achievements, and challenges.
This year’s rendition of the address took on an added significance, given the obvious economic distress and widespread hardship that now pervades our nation.
A few weeks ago, President Akufo-Addo performed this constitutional duty and in view of the challenging economic circumstances that now face the citizenry, especially, the poor and the vulnerable, we had all looked forward to an address in which a truthful, objective, and transparent appraisal of the national situation would be presented to the nation.
The occasion offered scope and a unique opportunity for the President to address in concrete terms, the most pressing concerns of the people in these times and rally the nation for the purpose of extricating our vehicle of state from the ditch into which he has led us.
We had hoped that the widespread hardship and suffering that Ghanaians are experiencing in these difficult times will be duly acknowledged, and responsibility taken for the arrogant missteps, wrong policy choices and mismanagement that are mainly responsible for our current situation.
Instead, and rather unfortunately, we were fed the same litany of buck-passing, denial, and nonchalance that the people of Ghana have been served by this President and his government over the last five years.
Nothing is ever their fault.
The President's spirited effort to paint a rosy picture amid national anguish and despair was most disconcerting and gave the clearest indication yet, that the President and his government have fallen prey to the phenomenon of gaslighting!
It is apparent, that those to whom we have entrusted the leadership of this country are yet to grasp the stark reality of our national situation.
As was manifest in his State of the Nation Address, President Akufo-Addo and his Head of the Economic Management Team (EMT), have sought to shirk and deflect responsibility for the economic mismanagement that has led to these hardships and national economic meltdown.
In the specific case of the Head of the Economic Management Team, who loquaciously postured as the gold standard for economic management while in opposition, we have continued to note his present flight from economic discourse even as the economy tipped into a tailspin.
The issues of debt, taxation and depreciation of the currency which rolled off his tongue in his overzealous and misplaced narratives against the erstwhile NDC administration has become taboo words for him, until an avalanche of public criticism and demands forced him a few weeks ago, to make a pitiful torrent of unconvincing excuses for the disastrous mismanagement of the economy.
A LITANY OF EXCUSES The list of excuses offered by this government for the economic mess keeps growing by the day.
When it has been convenient, COVID-19 has been made the scapegoat and has been blamed for our woes.
The Russian-Ukraine war has also featured prominently on the excuses list as have the so-called financial sector clean-up and supposed excess capacity payments in the energy sector.
My brothers and sisters, none of these claims are acceptable.
THE COVID-19 EXCUSE The facts reveal that while no one can run away from its impact on the global economy, the COVID-19 pandemic paved way for the Government of Ghana to receive an unprecedented windfall that previous governments could only dream off.
Over GHS 30 billion, sufficient to plug the revenue shortfall of GHS 12 billion anticipated for 2020, was made available to this Government from various sources.
The funding sources ranged from our development partners to internal buffers like the Stabilization Fund which was set up by an NDC administration, and other generous donors.
Namely: 1 billion USD facility from the IMF, 200 million USD from the Stabilization Fund, 430 million USD from the World Bank, 400 million USD out of the 1 billion USD SDR provided to BOG, Over 100 million from AfDB and bilateral partners, 20 billion Ghana Cedis from the BOG Being a pandemic, COVID-19 affected almost every country on earth including our West African neighbours with who we share similar economic characteristics.
Yet, these neighboring countries such as Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, Benin, Guinea, Nigeria, Liberia, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, have emerged from this pandemic comparatively unscathed and with relatively stronger fundamentals as compared to ours.
Ghana has incurred and recorded astronomical double-digit budget deficits and huge public debts than our West African peers.
Long before COVID-19, it was evident that the economy was being mismanaged.
I cautioned against the mismanagement.
By 2019, our deficit and debt figures had already reached distress levels.
This is a fact which was recently corroborated by the World Bank through its country representative in Ghana.
Unprofessionally, the real figures were always grossly understated under the guise of “appendices, memorandum and below the line items” in our budgets.
It is this creative accounting and cooking the books deliberately done in a bid to conceal the true extent of our economic problems that has eventually caught up with this government.
Instead of making judicious use of the resources obtained because of COVID to cushion Ghanaians against the disease and spending strategically to stimulate people-centred economic recovery, the Akufo-Addo administration saw this windfall as an avenue for wasteful expenditure and a conduit for unmerited electoral success.
The people of Ghana demand an independent forensic audit into how the COVID-19 monies were spent.
THE RUSSIAN UKRAINIAN CONFLICT EXCUSE The Russian-Ukrainian conflict cannot possibly be responsible for the suffering Ghanaians are going through.
The suffering predates the war.
Before this conflict, our currency had been depreciating and was impacting negatively on fuel and commodity prices in our markets.