The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has claimed that the GhanaCard is more impactful to the country’s development than constructing 1000 interchanges across the country.
Dr Bawumia speaking at the Accra Business School on Thursday (14 July), under the theme: ‘The Role of Information Technology Education in the Government’s Digitalisation Agenda’, said the GhanaCard will impact Ghana’s development in the long term.
“Today we have 16 million Ghanaians with unique identities and that is a major transformation, a lot of people sometimes don’t even appreciate what the impact of the GhanaCard is but if you gave 1000 interchanges and the GhanaCard, I will choose the GhanaCard because it has more impact on development,” Dr Bawumia said.
The Vice President who has recently been derided for Ghana’s current economic crises also blamed the country’s economic challenges resulting in an IMF bailout request on what he describes as a quadruple Whammy.
According to him, the energy sector excess capacity payments, the banking sector clean-up and the COVID-19 impact on the economy triggered the IMF situation for the country.
“The Ministry of Finance estimates that the interest payment on this borrowing for the three items amounts to GHC8.5 billion annually. This is some 23% of Ghana’s annual interest payments of GHC 37 billion,”
He added: “It should be noted that without the GHC54.0 billion debt for the three exceptional items (COVID-19, Financial Sector and Energy), Ghana’s debt to GDP would be within the sustainability threshold of some 68% instead of the 76.6% at the end of 2021.”
“If you take out the fiscal impact of this quadruple whammy, Ghana will not be going to the IMF for support because our fiscal, debt and balance of payments outlook would be sustainable.
“Of the four factors, two (COVID-19 and the Russia Ukraine war) were external and the other two (the banking sector clean up and the excess capacity payments) were the result of policies of the previous government.”
