Bawumia: I have not abandoned economy - The Daily Statesman Newspaper

Vice-President Mahamadu Bawumia has said he has not abandoned economics, which is his field, to focus on Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

He explained that there is a link between IT and the economy, hence the focus on how to digitalise the economy to build a stronger and more efficient economy.

“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,” he said.

Dr. Bawmia said this when he addressed some participants of an Agric students’ boot camp at the Jubilee House on Monday.

“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,” he stated.

Critics

The Tertiary Education Institutions Network of the NDC had earlier claimed that Dr. Bawumia was shifting the goalposts, moving away from the politics of economics to digitalisation.

A statement signed by the National Deputy TEIN Coordinator, Mr Ekow Djan, 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 “Digitalisation/Digitisation” 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 Dept to GDP ratio is close to 80 percent.

“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 Digitisation’

“We could only wish him well in his new office. Upon all the unfulfilled promises, Vice President Bawumia has once again chosen to promise unborn babies to issue them Ghana Cards. Governance is a serious business—President Mahama will always be vindicated,” the statement read.

Wisdom

However, the Vice-President noted that whatever problems exist and make this economy inefficient affect everybody, hence the need to know what is being dealt with and tackling from the root.

“If identity, just establishing your identity is a problem and you go to Dr. Kofi Mensah of Agric Development Bank and you say to Dr Kofi Mensah, ‘I want to borrow money for my business’, now they need to establish your identity first of all, and if that is not clear, if there is any doubt about what your identity is, there may be even doubts about your age and all of that, you are not likely to get that loan,” he said.

“If you don’t have a track record that goes with your identity, you have a problem, and we had a situation in Ghana where, for 60 years, we have a 30 million population but we don’t have unique identity numbers. And this is why we introduced and sort of went ahead to implement because in 2008, the National Identification Card project was introduced but when we came into office in 2017, we thought that was the key pillar digitisation of this economy,” Dr. Bawumia further explained.