Speeches

This is a crucial time for this country. For many years, Ghana stood out as a model for democracy and social stability. Your achievements in reducing poverty levels, improving the welfare of most vulnerable and providing key social services such as health and education were noticed in the region. But the past few years have been characterized by uncertainty and challenges: fiscal and external imbalances, depressed commodity prices, a growing public debt, high inflation and a weakening currency are creating a difficult outlook for the country.

On behalf of the Government and People of the Republic of Ghana, I warmly welcome you to the city of Accra and to the first and largest conference ever in Africa dedicated to the topic of enhancing data for better macroeconomic and financial policies. We are very pleased to be collaborating with the IMF and the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) to discuss this important topic and I am particularly delighted to host this gathering of high-level policy colleagues from across the continent.

That we have made significant progress as a country with regards to our effort at poverty reduction through social protection programmes

That we still have a long way to go and a lot more to learn

That we need to urgently introduce efficient measures both in our social protection spending in particular and social spending in general especially with regards to resource allocation and cost of delivering these programmes

I find this conference as a unique opportunity to share experiences on best practices and policies, on how international public finance can contribute to accelerating progress in development.  We will make specific contributions to the financing for development (FfD) process and attempt to influence decision-makers ahead of the Addis Ababa conference on Financing for Development in July 2015.

On behalf of the management and staff of the Ghana Revenue Authority, I wish to present to our distinguished taxpayers and other stakeholders a very significant step that GRA has taken in collaboration with its partner, GCNet, towards modernization and automation of our business processes. GRA has the greatest pleasure to introduce to you all, the portal for registration and other key services in tax administration.

Financial literacy is the set of skills and knowledge that allows an individual, households and businesses to make informed and effective decisions regarding their financial resources. We find this as an important life-skill in our diverse capacities as students, employees, consumers, savers and investors.

If knowledge is power then financial knowledge is security. Financial literacy has been identified globally as a critical tool for development – issue relating to budgeting, savings, investment and the management of risks are relevant for the individual, households and businesses in their development process. Making decisions on these issues depending on the level of complexity require at least basic financial literacy levels which involves the ability of the financial consumer to appreciate the essential and basic knowledge that will help make sound financial decisions and judgments. 

Since my appearance before this august House in November 2013, several developments in the economy-particularly the sharp depreciation of the cedi in the first quarter of 2014, rising interest rates, and the adverse global environment on commodity prices, have posed challenges to the achievement of the 2014 economic programme.  

However, it is the resolve of Government to strengthen the measures outlined in the 2014 Budget to enable our country confront these essentially short-term challenges and meet our development goals.

Over the past two decades, the GSE has provided a platform for companies to raise capital and also the investor community both domestic and foreign to invest in equities and bonds including the three year, five years and the recent seven year bonds issued by Government.

The high level of confidence investors have in the exchange is underscored by its accolade as one of the best performing markets in Africa in terms of returns to investors. I applaud the GSE management for their hard work.

Four years ago, we begun a journey to rationalize compensation for workers on the principle espoused in our constitution of equal pay for work of equal value.

It was a journey fraught with both opportunities and challenges, but we were determined to work together to ensure that this more equitable system for remunerating public sector employees in Ghana became a reality.