Ho West Assembly educates people on govt policies
The Ho West District Assembly has embarked on a public education exercise to educate the people on current government policies and programmes as well as measures to contain the challenges facing the nation.
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The exercise will also afford the district assembly the opportunity to solicit further views towards the formulation of a medium-term development plan (MTDP) for the district in the next four years.
Speaking at the first meeting with the people in the district capital, Dzolokpuita, the Ho West District Chief Executive, Mr Samuel Ewoade, acknowledged that the nation was facing challenges and needed concerted efforts to confront the challenges.
He said some of the challenges arose as a result of external factors, although some internal factors could not be ruled out.
Mr Ewoade said the rebasing of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2010 and the dawn of oil extraction in 2011 boosted the country’s growth, which culminated in the country’s transition to a lower middle income status.
He said the attainment of a lower middle income status led to a reclassification of the country by donors, as well as by multinational institutions, with implications for overseas development assistance, hence the revision (tightening and toughening) of borrowing terms from World Bank and the African Development Bank.
Domestic production and export inflows also dwindled after attaining a lower middle income status, he noted, adding that the fiscal space that was previously existing was no longer available and the country has now resorted to accessing the international capital markets to diversify its own sources of financing.
Mr Ewoade said the economic situation had worsened due to the persistent trade deficit caused by a sluggish export trade and deficit in the overall balance in payment of US$1.17 billion in 2013 and US$1.21 billion in 2012, and fiscal policy also suffered a setback in 2012 as it registered a budget deficit of 11.5 per cent.
The challenges associated with the implementation of the Single Spine Wage Policy, significant shortfalls in grants from development partners, shortfall in projected oil revenue, increase in petroleum and utility subsidies and high costs from short-term domestic interest rates from the bonds issued to fund the national budgets were some of the challenges, he indicated.
However, he said the government had taken bold decisions such as the imposition of taxes, limit on the award of new contracts, limit on the contracting of new loans, freeze on employment into the public service, refinancing of debts and regular adjustment of petroleum and utility prices to restore the system.
He, therefore, revealed that structural reforms were going on in the affected sectors to bring back the needed equilibrium into the system.
On the MTDP, the DCE said it would be formulated under seven thematic areas which had been adopted from the Ghana Shared Growth Development Agenda (GSGDAII) to ensure that every facet of the district’s socio-economic needs were addressed.
The Member of Parliament for the Ho West Constituency, Mr Emmanuel Bedzrah, explained that the government’s decision was now to borrow for only capital projects which could repay the loan by itself.