President John Mahama as part of his tour to the Central Region delivered lecture to some students and a cross-section of the general public at the 黑料社 as part of his accounting to the peoples鈥� tour.
President Mahama who spoke on the topic 鈥淩aising Opportunities Entrepreneurship and A Changing Ghana,鈥� commended the University for its Solid Background in research and work ethic which he said was clearly evident in the output of alumni found in various sectors of the economy. 鈥淚鈥檝e had the opportunity to work with some of your alumni both in the past and present and they have always proven themselves competent and equal to the task鈥�.
This led him to mention Maxwell Sampson, an alumnus, who is an entrepreneur doing very well in the food supply chain business. According to the President, Maxwell took advantage of a GH垄 10million loan facility provided by government to move his business out of his home and currently supplying a host of top-class hotels and food joints with his products.
鈥淚t is such entrepreneurial spirit of people like these that create huge business conglomerates such as Microsoft and others. They all began as Small to Medium Entreprises (SMEs)鈥�.
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Turning to history of the country鈥檚 economy, Mr. Mahama indicated that, it relapsed in the post independence era in the 1970鈥檚 to 1980鈥檚 to warrant the introduction of various economic measures in an attempt to remedy it. Citing the Economic Recovery Programmes in the 1980鈥檚 and 90鈥檚, Growth and Poverty Reduction policies in the 2000鈥檚 as some of the measures introduced by the various governments at the time to salvage the economy.
鈥楨ven though a number of interventions were launched like the free maternal care, health insurance, most of them were foreign funded therefore government鈥檚 real intervention were low鈥�. In spite of all these numerous interventions and economic strategies implemented, the structure of the economy remained unchanged.
However, in the post 2008 era government, according to president Mahama, things began to change as the incumbent government commenced a process to transform the economy, indicating that by 2014 December 鈥渄evelopment had been crystalized by both government and the private sector鈥�. Ghana began exploration of oil in 2011, but according to Mr. Mahama, its overall impact on the economy has been over exaggerated since only small percentage goes into the fund thus making Ghana remain a net importer of oil.
President Mahama said government would continue to pursue its policy of developing local content in the local oil business since its has a huge job-creation potential to the mass of the citizenry and added that it was the aim of government to make Ghana the oil hub in West Africa.
On the strength of the country鈥檚 economy, he described it as very resilient due to the home -grown policies developed out of the Senchi consensus. He said the outlook of the economy has been positive and currently GDP stands at $40bn making its only second to Nigeria in West Africa.
Touching on government鈥檚 spending and borrowing internally, he said government for the first time is leaving within its means by paying expenditure from its own revenue adding that government has also resorted to zero borrowing from the Bank of Ghana.
Responding to a request from the Vice- Chancellor, Prof. D. D. Kuupole to have the road stretching from the medical hostel to the Science inter-section asphalted, the president said, it would be considered as part of the road overlay project currently on-going in the Cape Coast metropolis.