SONA 2022: President Akufo -Addo Now Admits Ghana’s Economic Hardships
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has now opened out to admit to the general public that there is economic hardship in the country currently under his administration and begged Ghanaians to exercise restraint since the government has rolled out a series of corrective measures which will help significantly mitigate plight of Ghanaians.
Freeman Koryekpor Awlesu Greater 
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has now oppened out to admit to the general public that there is economic hardship in the country currently under his administration and begged Ghanaians to exercise restraint since the government has rolled out series of the corrective measures which will help significantly mitigate the plight of Ghanaians.
"From my vantage point as President of the Republic, from the focused point as head of government, from the enviable position of a husband, a father, and a grandfather, I know that there is a general sense of anxiety in our nation at the moment.
"The Ghanaian people are anxious about the economy, the cost of living, income levels, jobs for young people, and even about issues on which we all thought we had achieved a national consensus," the President noted.
Delivering the 2022 State of the Nation's Address in Parliament in Accra on Wednesday, the President stated that the world before COVID now seems such a long time ago, and the trauma of a world ruled by a pandemic has changed all our perspectives.
Back in March 2020 when the first cases of COVID hit our country, President Akufo-Addo noted that Ghana we and the rest of the world were in unchartered territory, fear and sheer terror gripped our land.
Probably, to future generations, he indicated that it will look quite obvious what should have been done, but, two years ago, it felt like we had fallen into a dark, malicious, and terrifying abyss.
According to the President, uld not have been prepared for the catastrophe that hit us, even the richest economies with the most sophisticated structures were unprepared.
"Maybe some of us have forgotten what the experts were predicting at the time. Our health and medical infrastructure were woefully inadequate, and we would not be able to cope. There were going to be piles of dead bodies strewn across the streets of Africa,' he added.
He stated that he took the decision we would prioritize the saving of lives, and, then, we would get together to rebuild our economy. Nobody imagined the devastation would be so widespread and last so long.
He maintained that the government had to learn some very hard lessons, and our belief in the need to be self-sufficient was reinforced when vaccine nationalism was played out blatantly by the rich and powerful countries.
"Mr. Speaker, the Presidential Vaccine Manufacturing Committee, which I set up to respond to this obvious deficiency, has put in place a comprehensive strategy for domestic vaccine production, and the establishment of a National Vaccine Institute to implement the strategy, which will enable us to begin the first phase of commercial production in January 2024. A Bill will shortly be brought to you, in this House, for your support and approval for the establishment of the National Vaccine Institute," he said.
He pointed out that this pandemic exposed other shortcomings of our country, which have, undoubtedly, contributed to the anxieties that have befallen the nation.
He asserted that Agenda 111 was born out of this necessity to address some of these shortcomings.
According to him, at the normal rate of growth, the government is not likely to make up the deficit in our health facilities' infrastructure for a very long time.
Hence, he said the need for a special, dedicated program of infrastructural development.
He said they have undertaken the construction of 111 entities, which comprise standard 100-bed district hospitals for one hundred and one (101) districts without hospitals, with accommodation for doctors and nurses; six (6) new regional hospitals for each of the six (6) new regions; the rehabilitation of the Effia-Nkwanta Hospital in the Western Region; one (1) new regional hospital for the Western Region; and three (3) psychiatric hospitals for each of the three (3) zones of the country, i.e. North, Middle, and Coastal.
According to him, Agenda 111 is an ambitious project, which must and will be done, and which will create some thirty-three thousand, nine hundred (33,900) jobs for construction workers, and, on completion, some thirty-four thousand, three hundred (34,300) jobs for health workers.
"Mr. Speaker, I have to report that, like all major construction projects, it is evident that the initial schedule we gave for the completion of Agenda 111 was overly ambitious.
"Identifying suitable sites around the country, for example, has turned out to be even more problematic than had been anticipated. I can say that a great deal of the preparatory work has now been completed, and work has started at eighty-seven (87) of the one hundred and eleven (111) sites. I have been assured that preliminary work on the remaining twenty-four (24) sites is ongoing.
He posited that they have every intention of seeing this project through to a successful end, which will enable me to commission all one hundred and eleven (111) hospitals before I leave office on 7th January 2025.
" Mr. Speaker, we have saved lives and fared much better than we had feared and the experts predicted, but the consequences of lockdowns, border and business closures, and unplanned expenditures have combined to have a devastating impact on our economy.
He noted that the unplanned expenditures included, but were not limited to, the recruitment, permanently, of fifty-eight thousand, one hundred and ninety-one (58,191) healthcare professionals, and the payment of extra incentives to our frontline health workers.
According to the President, it took an unbudgeted GH¢1.9 billion to ensure that our children and teaching staff went back and stayed in school safely.
He added that some, including a few in this Honourable House, went as far as to accuse the government of trying to kill Ghanaian children when we introduced the controlled school re-openings.
He stressed that "I might add here that, in some countries, school closures have lasted for twenty (20) months, and children are only now going back to school. Our children did not lose a single academic year."
He indicated that they provided nearly five million (5 million) households and over ten million (10 million) people with electricity and water subsidies at the time they were most needed.
In all, he disclosed that data from the Ministry of Finance tells us that an amount of GH¢17.7 billion (or 4.6% of GDP) has been spent on containing the pandemic since 2020.
He mentioned that the economic devastation of COVID has, since the beginning of this year, been further aggravated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has worsened the economic outlook of the entire world. We, in Ghana, have not escaped this development, and the consequences are being felt in rising living costs at our markets and fuel stations.
