Health Minister Kwaku Agyeman-Manu has said the Akufo-Addo-led government has managed Ghana’s economy far better than his predecessor despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Minister was speaking at a Press Conference held in Accra on Wednesday, 9 February 2022.
The Minister noted that the government will need time to fix the country due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We will fix the country but we need time to deal with the effects COVID-19 has on our economy.”
He further disproved claims that government is not working on fixing the economy of the country.
The Minister noted that: “Productivity was impacted, cash flow impacted, trading that brings us a lot of revenue in our country through the ports were eventually stopped. We couldn’t get imports from China because of lockdowns and factory closures, so trade charges started escalating and when trade charges go up we are importing inflation and definitely we will feel our country is accumulating hardships.”
The Minister further noted that, Ghanaians are more fixated on forming movements to call on government to fix the country instead of evaluation the impact of the pandemic on the economy.
“Tourism suffered the most, that is part of the impact of COVID on our economy, but we have stopped evaluating this and we’ve gone ahead to form a movement – Fix the Country. We will fix the country but we need time,” the Health Minister stated.
Mr Agyeman-Manu called on persons who are yet to take the COVID-19 vaccine to do so as it forms part of measures adopted by government to rebuild the economy.
“When we get ourselves vaccinated, it will give us confidence to be able to get people back to work fully and see how productivity will move and see how our economy will grow to get yourselves back on track.”
He added: “I won’t say the previous government didn’t do well, they tried but they didn’t get far. We are doing better even in times of COVID.
“You can see mortality reducing even in the midst of COVID and that is a success story so despite the fact that we were struggling we still had a cohort of workers doing their work.”
