NDC Achieved 52% Of 2012 Manifesto - STRANEK

The research report by Strategic Thinkers Network (STRANEK) has scored the National Democratic Congress (NDC) 52 percent on the status of the implementation of the 2012 manifesto promises.

At a press briefing, the Executive Director of STRANEK, Nii Tettey Tetteh said the overall performance of the National Democratic Congress per their manifesto promises of 2012 taking into consideration the power crisis, the devaluation of the cedi, inflation, global economic meltdown, climate change, fall in prices of oil, stringent monetary fiscal policies with the IMF among others we score the performance of the party and as a government at 52%.

He noted that the report focuses on the policy document of 2012 of the National Democratic Congress prior to election 2012 on six critical key economic areas such as Education, Infrastructure -: education, health, roads, ICT, water, port, aviation, industries etc, Energy, Governance, Social Policy interventions and Creation of enabling environment for industrialization.

According to him, the report emphasize the status of implementation of the NDC promises and implementations are not static but a process hence the National Democratic Congress has scored 52%.

Nii Tettey Tetteh indicated that so far as their 2012 manifesto is concerned, 61% of Ghanaians are optimistic about the NDC government so far as their social and economic conditions are concerned.

He said in view of these thematic areas set out by NDC party, as a policy think tank, they assessed the promises of the NDC stated in the manifesto.

According to him, he believe governance is a process hence the aim of putting political parties and successive government on their toes and to caution them to make realistic promises to the people of this country to be able to access them based on performance.

He explained that gone are the days when a political party makes phantom promises and goes away with it, “times have changed, our political environment has changed, Ghanaians now want development, policies that will empower them financially and the accessibility of basic economic and social needs.”

The Executive Director said the size of the Ghanaian economy of today cannot be compared to the economy of 2008 due to a lot of factors.

Nii Tettey Tetteh emphasised that the economy as we speak has grown over USD 5.1 billion in 2001 to USD 28.5 billion in 2008.

He added that this same economy has grown to about USD 200 billion in the mid-year of 2016 and the factors of measure between 2001, 2008, 2012 and 2016 are different.

According to him, in the second quarter of 2016, we all know for a fact that Ghana’s economy expanded following a downward revised growth rate of 4.8% in the previous quarters by 2.50%.

“GDP annual growth rate in Ghana averagely was 6.97% from 2000 until 2016 and it’s also a fact that the first quarter of 2012 attain the highest of 25% and a record low of -3.80% in the first quarter of 2014,” he posited.

Nii Tettey Tetteh intimated that Ghana’s economic growth had slowed down from 4.0% to 3.70% in 2014 and 2015 respectively while it is expected to be 5.65% by the end of 2016.

In the year 2017, following the consolidation of microeconomic stability and the successful implementation of measures that has resolve the power crisis we had, he said the expectation is that the economy will grow at the rate of 7.90% to 8.40%.

He added that the government has so far maintained a tightened monetary and fiscal policies since 2015 to date even though we are few weeks away from elections and we applaud the government for that bold fiscal discipline.

Nii Tettey Tetteh said we all know that the economy had faced challenges especially the power crisis, unpredictably low market price for the country’s oil and gold products between 2012 and 2015.

According to him, despite all these challenges the industrial sector recorded a positive growth of 9.1% and the service sector been the main driver of growth.

“As mentioned earlier, we expect the economy to recover with a projected GDP growth rate of 5.8% and 7.9% to 8.4% by close of the year 2016, 2017 respectively,” he intimated.

Nii Tettey Tetteh added that the ICT sector has also seen double digits growth of 18.8% over the last 18 months due to new infrastructure investments and value added mobile services.

He explained that the infrastructure investment was with the expanding the fibre optic corridors by providing a solid backbone to extend reach to secondary and smaller communities.

The Executive Director indicated that the USD 38 million eastern corridor fibre optic project was completed last year by Alcatel – Lucent spanning about 800km which connects Ho in the Volta region to Bawku in the Upper East region, facilitating internet access to to over 120 districts. Also the construction of phase 1 of 30 enhanced community ICT centers across the country and the phase 2 of 20 been currently under construction.

According to him, the migration of analogue to digital, the elimination of sim box fraud; online child protection initiative; bringing ministries and MMDAs to the mainstream government e-service platform; provision of computer among others elaborated below and their status of implementation.

Briefly on job creation, he mentioned the expansion of modules under Youth Employment Agency (YEA); empowerment of entrepreneurs through Youth Entrepreneurship Support; Opportunities Industrialization Centres (OIC); Rural Enterprises Programme (REP); Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC) among others elucidated below with their status of implementation.

Coupled with all this historical facts, he noted that projections and challenges that bedeviled this government, as a policy advocacy group they want to assess the status of implementations of their promises in which Ghanaians gave them the mandate to govern this country in 2012.

“If anyone put figures out there in doing their comparative analysis ask him or her about the rate of change,” he stated.

Nii Tettey Tetteh posited that with governance under the NDC party’s 2012 manifesto, Ghana was 2^nd on the 2015 Rule of Law index of the World Justice Project (WJP), 2^nd only to Cape Verde in West Africa on the UN Human Development Index. Ghana was also 5^th in Africa on the 2015 Democracy Index by Economist Intelligence Unit and lastly 7^th on the 2015 corruption perception index by Transparency International.

“In looking at the 2012 manifesto and per a review on survey of the basic economic and social needs of Ghanaians in relation to the six thematic areas, we believe they have done above average and a review of their 2016 manifesto one can say, is a continuation of what they have started and they have not finished since it is a new vision that they have set themselves to achieve by 2021,” he stated.

Nii Tettey Tetteh concluded that the best statistics is what the people of Ghana will deliver on December 7^th which includes peace and stability, increase in school enrolment at the primary, secondary and colleges, massive infrastructure in education, health, roads and transport, independence of the judiciary etc.

He added that the scope of the survey was based on information from various ministries, mmda's among others between 7th January 2012 to August 31, 2016 coordinated by Strategic Thinkers Network (STRANEK).

Individuals were sampled and interviewed in all the 10 regions in languages that they can understand, according to him.