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23.10.2014 Politics

Mahama Has Failed – Survey Reveals

By Daily Guide
President John MahamaPresident John Mahama
23.10.2014 LISTEN

KEY FINDINGS from the Afrobarometer Round 6 Survey conducted locally by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) on the economic conditions in the country point out that a lot of Ghanaians are pissed off with government's management of the economy.

A large majority of Ghanaians (82 percent) believe that the country is heading in the 'wrong direction', painting a gloomy picture about the Mahama administration. In 2013, 57 percent of respondents held such a view.

'The belief that the country is heading in the wrong direction is widespread across Ghana's 10 regions,' the survey said.

The report sampled the views of 2,400 Ghanaians about their economic and living conditions in the past months.

The respondents said government was performing very badly in improving their living condition.

The survey also revealed that majority of Ghanaians say their current economic conditions have worsened, compared to the same period a year ago, expressing dissatisfaction with the national economy.

Oil Revenue
Ghanaians who believe that the revenue from the oil fund should better their conditions were rather disappointed with the state of the economy.

Seventy percent of respondents expressed the belief that government had been 'ineffective' or 'very ineffective' in using oil revenues to improve their living conditions.

Also, a lot of them (almost 4 in every 10) were pessimistic about national economic conditions in the coming year.

Daniel Armah-Attoh, a senior research officer with CDD, who presented the findings in Accra yesterday, said 42 percent of respondents stated that their living conditions had deteriorated while the percentage of those who saw their living conditions compared to others as 'worse' or 'much worse,' increased by 10 percentage points between 2012 and 2014.

Economic Management
Mr Armah-Attoh said a plurality of Ghanaians identified economic management as the most important problem to address, followed by education, electricity and health.

'Some Ghanaians went without basic necessities such as food, water, medical care, fuel for cooking and cash income sometimes within the past year. Lack of cash income was the most common of the problems.

'Close to six in 10 Ghanaians (57 percent) report lacking cash income sometimes during the past year. On average, a little over one-quarter of Ghanaians report going without food, water and medical care in the past year. About one fifth also lacked fuel for cooking.'

Another issue that cropped up was shortage of cash income that increased by 7 percentage points between 2012 and 2014.

Negative Ratings
'Over time, negative ratings of government performance have increased across all five indicators - managing the economy, improving living standards, creating jobs, keeping prices down and narrowing income gaps.'

In general, government received negative ratings on how it had managed key macro-economic issues. A large majority of Ghanaians said government was managing the economy very badly.

Afrobarometer is an Africa-led, non-partisan survey research project that measures citizens' attitudes on democracy and governance, the economy, civil society and other topics.

Started in 12 countries in 1999, it expanded to 35 African countries in Round 5 (2011-2013).

Survey Methodology
Using a nationally representative sample of adult citizens, all respondents were randomly selected. The latest survey (conducted between May 24 and June 10, this year), had a sample size of 2,400 selected from 291 towns in 177 districts spread across 300 enumeration areas in Ghana's 10 regions.

Key issues in the media during the period of the survey were the announcement of a plan to introduce VAT on banking services which was suspended at the last minute after a series of concerns by industry players; depreciation of the cedi; the rising level of inflation and Prof Kwesi Botchwey's speech on the economic crisis facing the country.

Others were the AGI and IMF concerns about BoG's foreign exchange measures and their inability to stabilise the cedi and also the increment in minimum wage by 14.5 percent, among others.

 By Samuel Boadi
 
 

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