UG’s 69th New Year School Speech by Sir Sam Jonah

Your Excellency, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, our Vice President of the Republic of Ghana,

Professor Yaw Twumasi, Chairman of the university council,

Professor Ebenezer Oduro Owusu, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana,

Prof Michael Ayitey Tagoe,

Honourable members of parliament,

Your Excellencies,

Professor Francis Nkrumah and his delightful wife Margaret, and

My own delightful wife Giselle, good morning.

I am truly honoured and privileged for the invitation to speak at this year’s New Year School and Conference.

It is my hope and prayer that at the end of the session we would have added to the reputation of the school as a forum for tackling urgent issues of national development. This year’s theme -“Job Creation for Accelerated National Development: the role of the private sector”, touches the core of the most critical challenge for our national development – the fierce urgency of creating jobs,

particularly for the youth and the role of the private sector in this effort.

I have been asked to speak specifically on creating an enabling investment environment to attract the private sector.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Various commentators including our esteemed Vice President, who is here with us today have reflected extensively on some of the challenges our economy currently faces. These include but not limited to; high levels of public debt, seemingly unsustainable budget deficit, and weaknesses in our financial services sectors, price instability and low tax mobilization

These challenges led us to the IMF a few years back resulting in the imposition of conditionalities the meeting of some of which may limit our options on the management of the economy.

Nevertheless, I note with satisfaction the governments declared intention to face up squarely to the task at hand, even as they pursue other strategies such as reduction in aid dependency, social intervention programs such as free SHS, one district one factory, one district one dam, to name a few.

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