The outbreak of COVID-19 brought in its train deaths and socioeconomic devastation of immeasurable proportions across the globe.
In Ghana as elsewhere, jobs were lost, cost of healthcare for both families and the state rose; a lockdown once restricted movement of the citizenry, most of whom eke a living on daily basis; and government spending generally rose, making revenue appear too little to push the growth of the economy.
It is noteworthy that the government introduced projects and programmes to ameliorate the hardship in the country.
One of them is the comprehensive GH¢100-million ghana COVID-19 Alleviation and Revitalization of Enterprises Support (CARES)or ‘Obaatan pa’ programme.
Launched on November 18, 2020 in Accra, the Obaatanpa programme is to stabilise, revitalise and transform Ghana’s economy to create jobs and ensure prosperity for Ghanaians over a three-year period.
It is planned to run in two phases: a six-month stabilization phase has already run from July to December 2020; and a medium-term revitalisation phase from 2021 to2023.
The first phase builds on the actions already taken by the government under the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme such as stabilisation of the economy, supporting businesses and workers, strengthening the health system, ensuring food security, and adopting legislation to facilitate quick economic recovery.
The second phase, programmed to revitalise and transform the economy from 2021 to 2023, highlights support for commercial farming and the need to attract educated youth into agriculture; and building of the country’s light manufacturing sector.
This phase also includes the development of engineering/machine tools and ICT/digital economy; development of the country’s housing and construction sector; and reviewing and optimising the implementation of the government’s flagship and key programmes.
No doubt, if all the modules work as expected, improvement in the economy would be visible to everyone.
However, before the tenure of Ghana CARES would elapse for objective, comprehensive assessment, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says Obaatanpa has begun to yield results.
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He adds that the country’s economy has begun showing signs of recovery from the COVID-19 setbacks.
The President expresses optimism that the programmes and policies put in place by his administration to deal with the pandemic would return the country to a path of robust and sustained economic growth.
It is the prayer of the Ghanaian Times that nothing would derail efforts to put the economy on a sound footing for growth in spite of the blows it has suffered from COVID-19.
The growth of the economy is good for every Ghanaian because among other benefits, it can create opportunities for industries to expand and new businesses to spring up, which will result in jobs to reduce the rate of unemployment in the country.
To that end, much attention must be given the private sector to create more jobs for the citizenry.
It is indisputable that Ghana is one place where the people are industrious and try to do something for themselves, thereby reducing the pressure that might have been on the government to provide jobs for the mass of the people.
The government must leverage this resourcefulness by helping even sole proprietors with loans to boost businesses.
It is good news that in spite of the progress being made amid COVID-19, the government has not relented in fighting the pandemic.
Besides ensuring adherence to other measures to fight the disease, the government is determined to reach the target of getting at least 20 million out of the over 30 million Ghanaians vaccinated as that would ensure herd immunity to tame the spread of COVID-19.
Therefore, it is another good news that the government has succeeded in securing nearly 26 million doses of vaccines and that so far, a total of 11 million vaccine doses had been administered.
Every Ghanaian should, thus, support the government to conquer the disease while growing the economy.
The post Support government to grow economy appeared first on Ghanaian Times.
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