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Politics of Monday, 25 November 2019

Source: peacefmonline.com

Bawumia is a gem, he has done well managing Ghana's economy - JB Danquah

Vice President Dr Mahamadu Bawumia Vice President Dr Mahamadu Bawumia

A staunch member of the New Patriotic Party and Chairman of the party's Minnesota Chapter in the United State of America, has commended Vice President Dr Bawumia for steering the economic affairs of Ghana excellently.

Mr Joseph Boakye Danquah in an interview with Neat FM stated that through digitalization, the Economic team led by Dr Bawumia has managed to formalize the economy of Ghana, making it buoyant.

He, therefore, called on Ghanaians to be thankful for having an economic gem-like Dr Bawumia serving us our Vice President.

The NPP Chairman affectionately called JB remarked that "We all have to be thankful that we have a capable person like Dr Bawumia who has taken charge and made sure we are formalizing the economy by digitalizing it."

On digitalizing the economy JB Danquah continued that "those are the fundamental change he had brought to the fold that would ensure that revenue collection would be enhanced...banks can operate better and fighting crimes can be improved".

Adding more to the benefits Ghana is deriving from a formalized economy, he noted that "If you formalize the economy, the benefits would be enormous like I have indicated already.

We can now broaden those who would be in the tax net. If everybody has a unique identification number which we are doing through the id and the pin, and we have done the address system, everything would be captured on a computer so if Kofi Mensah is doing any business, it will be easy to trace him to make sure he pays his taxes to the state".

In JB's view, such an economy would have everybody selling within Ghana's market space captured and would improve our revenue generation.

"Everyone selling on the market would be captured and revenue generation would go up."

He added that "As at now we are making only about 12% of our GDP as domestic revenue collection which is very low. We need to up to about 20%..."If we are able to do that our borrowing rate would go down because we would be able to raise the money by ourselves and therefore we would borrow less".

Mr Danquah posited that the path being taken by Dr Bawumia and his team would lessen the burden of the nation in terms of servicing loans in the future.

"Ghana's economy is growing and there is even a projection that it will even grow faster. If we borrow less, the rippling effect would be that we would be servicing less loans", he noted.

Addressing the recent 2020 budget statement presented by Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, JB Danquah noted that the content of the statement was positive and one that brings hope.

"It tried to consolidate all the gains that Ghana has made so far as a country since the inception of this administration...There were a lot of indicators that prove the country is moving in the right direction. Inflation, policy rate and interest rate is also down. There is a healthy trade balance and import cover is also excellent", he added.

He remarked that the budget statement brought to light that the Akufo-Addo led government was heavily investing in areas to accelerate the growth of Ghana.

"At the same time, the government is investing and putting money in all sort of places. It is investing in education and road construction and all those investments would accelerate growth. That is what makes me believe that this budget is a hopeful one"

He, therefore, called on all Ghanaians to support the NPP government to enable us to reach our destination.

Mr Danquah added that "some of the challenges recognized by the budget are revenue collection challenges...We have been seeing that we have been missing our revenue targets in the past but the good thing is that this government, has realized that we have to do something fundamentally different to make sure that we correct that anomaly in our economy."