Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia’s integrity and outstanding success in complementing President Akufo-Addo, according to Madam Ama Busia, a founder member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has made those who initially questioned his abilities to eat humble pie.
Madam Busia said in a media interview that a careful evaluation of how Dr. Bawumia treated his portfolio revealed an outstanding result and that the NPP would be wise to choose him as its presidential nominee for the 2024 election.
“Dr. Bawumia is more than qualified to lead the NPP in 2024. The young man is a gem” she added.
The astute politician claimed that the Vice President had been a formidable figure in the Party and government and that he had continued to play an important role in meeting Ghanaians’ needs.
Dr. Bawumia had complemented President Akufo-Addo so well, Madam Busia, a sister of Ghana’s former Prime Minister, Kofi Abrefa Busia, said, that he might take the baton from him after the President’s term ends in 2024.
Dr. Bawumia heads the Government’s Economic Management Team, which oversees the macro-economic management of the country.
Prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic during his first term in office, he was credited with stabilizing the cedi’s diminishing fortunes against major trade currencies and lowering the inflation rate from 15.4% in 2016 to a single digit.
Under his rule, the country’s annual growth rate rose from 3.6 percent to an average of 7%, and the average annual GDP per capita growth increased from 1.6 percent to 4.7 percent.
Also, the country’s 1.1 percent average annual growth rate of exports increased to 14.9 percent.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, annual manufacturing value-added growth rates rose from 2.1 percent to an average of 6.7 percent, providing fiscal space to enact multiple social policies.
Dr. Bawumia supported the government’s digitization policy, which resulted in the digitization of numerous public agencies to improve revenue mobilization, and spearheaded the roll-out of the National Property and Digital Addressing System, which now has over four million addresses.
He was instrumental in implementing the Triangular Mobile Money Interoperability Payment System at a reduced cost of 4.5 million dollars, instead of 1.2 billion dollars the previous government announced as the cost for implementation.
Ghanaians can now transfer money from their bank accounts to the mobile money wallets seamlessly and vice versa and also transfer across all mobile money operators without any difficulty to ensure a cash-lite society and financial inclusion.
Dr. Bawumia has also supported plans to digitize the land administration system to curb multiple sales of land and its associated protracted litigations.
He led a delegation in 2017 to China to negotiate for a two-billion-dollar Bauxite-Barter Arrangement under the Sinohydro Master Project Support for the country’s infrastructural development.
Being a devoted Muslim and concerned with the welfare of Zongo Communities, he took a special interest in securing scholarships for 40 Zongo students comprising 20 females and 20 males to study medicine in Cuba.
