President John Dramani Mahama has described the pace of Ghana’s economic recovery, one-and-a-half years after the National Democratic Congress (NDC) assumed power, as phenomenal.
He attributed the progress to fiscal discipline and deliberate efforts by the government to reduce waste and unnecessary expenditure.
The President made the remarks on the second day of his ‘Accounting to the People’ tour in Bolgatanga last Friday, where he engaged key stakeholders, including traditional rulers, the clergy, civil society organisations, the media and educationists.
He highlighted some of the gains made by his government and outlined projects being undertaken to address the country’s socio-economic and human resource development needs.
“Cutting down waste and related unnecessary expenditure has helped in this recovery. The whole of last year (2025), we did not send any loan agreement to Parliament. Not even one loan agreement,” he said.
President Mahama said the government’s commitment to prudent economic management and the effective use of Internally Generated Funds (IGF) had also contributed significantly to the recovery.
He said that until June this year, the government had not sent a single loan agreement to Parliament, indicating that it had largely relied on its own resources to implement its programmes.
“The first loan agreements that have been sent to Parliament are the $300 million World Bank STARR-J project, which was secured to end the double-track education system, and the $500 million Feeder Roads project,” he added.
President Mahama said the NDC administration was working towards fully stabilising the economy to create jobs and expand opportunities for the youth.
As part of that effort, he said the Minister of Finance, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, would present to Parliament a policy dubbed “The New Economy”, which would focus investment on seven selected sectors of the economy.
“And every year we are going to, for the next four years, invest $2.5 billion in those seven sectors. But the biggest is agriculture and agro-processing, where the Upper East will benefit a lot from it,” the President said.
He said agriculture and agro-processing would account for 50 per cent of the $10 billion investment over the four-year period.
“So $5 billion is going to go into agriculture and agro-processing, and I can assure you the Upper East Region is going to get its fair share of that $5 billion, so that we will cover creating more irrigation facilities to ensure our young people, even in the dry season, would have the opportunity to produce,” he stated.
President Mahama said he planned to position the Upper East Region as Ghana’s agricultural hub and indicated that work on the Tomato Revitalisation Project would be accelerated to enable farmers to produce quality tomatoes for the domestic market.
He also disclosed that the Tamne Irrigation Dam project in Tempane would see significant progress to enable five districts and a municipality in the eastern part of the region to intensify dry-season farming.
According to him, the government was working to reduce the country’s reliance on onion imports from Niger and would step up efforts to complete the Tamne Irrigation Dam to support increased onion production in the area.
He said other infrastructure projects in roads, health and education were also receiving attention and that the Upper East Region would benefit from investments in various areas of national development.
The Minister of Roads and Highways, Mr Kwame Governs Agbodza, on behalf of the President, visited the Talensi District to cut the sod for the construction of the Tongo-Sheaga-Pelungu road under the ‘Big Push’ initiative.
Mr Agbodza urged residents to exercise patience, saying construction works would begin soon and, when completed, would ease the difficulties faced by road users.
The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Donatus Atanga Akamugri, said the region had made significant progress, with more than 253 physical development projects implemented during the period under review.
He attributed the progress to the government’s strong economic management.
FROM FRANCIS DABRE DABANG, BOLGATANGA
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