Dr. Bawumia fires at critics over Economy
The Vice President, Dr Mahamadu Bawumia has responded to his critics who claimed he has abandoned his economics field, to focus on Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
According to him, he has not abandoned the economy but there is a link between IT and and economy hence he is focused on how to digitalize the economy.
It would be recalled that some members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) have been accusing the Vice President of shifting the goalposts by moving away from the politics of economics to be focusing on digitalisation.
A recent statement from the Tertiary Education Institutions Network (TEIN) wing of the NDC signed by the National Deputy TEIN Coordinator, Ekow Djan also said “While in opposition we were made to believe he was the Economist who had the solutions to all our challenges. Today, he’s no more interested in Economics rather, Information Technology (IT).
“Dr. Bawumia never mentioned “Digitalization/Digitization” while a Running Mate in opposition— he was always on Exchange rate, Borrowing, Revenue generation. What has become of the dollar to cedi rate? Is he not aware his administration has borrowed more than any administration? Our Debt to GDP ratio is close to 80%.
“And he still has the effrontery to speak in this country? Well, the Ghanaian voter is discerning. Our Economy is nothing to write home about.
“Probably that’s the more reason why he’s abandoned Economics and conferred onto himself “Honorary Minister for Communication and Digitization”.
However, speaking with Agric students’ boot camp at the Jubilee House on Monday, Dr. Bawumia indicated that “Coming into government and heading the Economic Management Team, the President gave me that mandate and opportunity to focus on how best we can transform and modernise Ghana to make sure that some of the challenges, some of the risks that, you know, people just want to operate in our economy are facing, how we mitigate those risks, how we make this economy an efficient economy and this is why I have focused on digitalisation.
“Sometimes people say, well, we thought you were an economist, but you’re doing so much in IT space. Have you left economics behind? No, no, not at all. In fact, it is because of the economy that I’m focusing on digitising because without building those pillars, our economy will just not be able to stand on its own feet.
“We need to build those pillars to allow all our sectors in the economy to be able to compete and so we decided to address some of the major bottlenecks that businesses face in the Agric sector through digitalisation.”
Source: Daily Guide
