by Elorm Desewu & Adnan Adams Mohammed
Following the victory of John Dramani Mahama at Ghana’s presidential polls conducted on December 7, and the majority in Parliament won by the political party he leads, the National Democratic Congress, Ghanaians are now gearing up for the socio-economic reset that he promised during his election campaign. The electorate has given them a clear mandate to effect the changes they have promised. This mandate is reflected in voting patterns for both the Presidency and for the legislature.
Based on his election campaign promises and the NDC’s manifesto, Ghanaians are now looking up to a number of key public policy initiatives being introduced over the coming months – or possibly years – as Mahama will have to overcome severe headwinds to implement his ambitious governance agenda.
At the top of the agenda is President elect Mahama’s flagship initiative for revamping and indeed restructuring the country’s economy altogether – the 24 hour economy initiative which plans to support the introduction of three eight hour shifts per day for factories which have real or potential excess demand for their products. This is to enable such factories produce goods all through the day and night, thus tripling their output. Importantly it also has the potential to as much as triple the jobs available at such factories while also dramatically expanding work openings across the spectrum of support services such as public transport, catering and security which would have to be delivered all through the day and night as well.
But while the target is to triple Ghana’s manufacturing capacity in certain industries, by meeting demand for certain goods and services and replacing certain types of imported products with locally produced ones as well, there will be certain constraints to the potentials of this policy in the early stages. This is because some industries do not have any where the installed capacity to operate three shifts a day especially with regards to storage and distribution, and some industries that do have the requisite capacity will find it difficult displacing imported alternatives that are cheaper and have perceived higher product quality. Besides, putting the requisite transportation, distribution, storage and other business support services, will be challenging and thus cannot be done overnight.
Therefore, the electorate will have to exercise patience while the logistical issues are sorted out and the enterprises that sign up to the initiative ramp up their production, distribution and sales infrastructure, which will take several months and indeed, for some, possibly more than a year. Government services that are currently still offered at subsidized rates will be even harder to bring into the 24 hour economy framework because of the State’s financial constraints.
While voters can be expected to understand this and give the incoming new Mahama administration some time to get the implementation up and running, there are several other key initiatives on which they will expect much quicker action. For instance Mahama will be expected to immediately pursue direly needed tax reforms in the form of the removal of the e-levy, COVID levy and the likes. More challenging but equally desired at the beginning of his term in office will be the establishment of initiatives such as the Women’s Bank and the National Apprenticeship Programme. Furthermore, he will be expected to begin defraying academic fees for first year students in government universities as well, from the beginning of the next academic year in September or October 2025, even as the political opposition will most likely demand increased admissions to state universities just to increase the size of the challenge facing the new government.
At the same time the public will expect to start enjoying free medical services at CHIPS compounds nationwide, based on the NDC’s campaign promises.
For reasons of sheer practicality, the incoming Mahama administration will have to choose its early battles carefully. It has become political tradition in Ghana for a newly elected government to trumpet its achievements during the first 100 days, which is made even more challenging by the facts that most of this period will be spent putting the new administration in place with Parliamentary approval and at the same time a national budget will have to drawn up by March, before the three months financial appropriation, approved by Parliament just after the December elections, runs out.
This is made even more challenging by the fact that the incoming administration is inheriting an International Monetary Fund programme which seeks to apply demand management rather supply side economics as its fulcrum, and the IMF remembers how the last attempt at supply side economic policy, implemented too quickly by the outgoing President Nana Akufo-Addo administration, provided the foundation for the now receding acute macroeconomic crisis that afflicted the country in 2022 and 2023.
Nevertheless Mahama and his economic management experts are confident that the hard won fiscal space created by the painful, and therefore controversial,public debt restructuring exercise, will provide the requisite room to get all these initiatives up and running sooner than later. NDC chieftains claim that they had done the math before making the promises; but past experience has shown that outgoing administrations tend to provide a prettier picture of the fiscal situation than what really obtains.
But the Mahama administration has signed up with the electorate to deliver on its promises and this is what it now has to do.
