Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Minister of Information
The Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, has stated that the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will at a point in his second-term reshuffle his ministers.
Unlike previous presidents, Akufo-Addo seldom reshuffles his ministers with the last one taking place in February 2019 in his first-term.
However, speaking on The Asaase Breakfast Show on Monday (19 July), Nkrumah said: “I am pretty sure that somewhere down the line there will be a shuffle of the president’s ministers.
“The other trick is that when people are given an opportunity to serve as high an office as some of these offices, you want to give them opportunity to have command over their schedules, because it takes a while to learn and take control.
“I think we have seen the President do some limited reshuffles in his first term based on his feedback from what we have done, where ministers report and then the monitoring and evaluation department gets to juxtapose your reports with what they have found out on the ground about how much you are delivering… between those two, the president will do the reshuffles that are necessary as and when they become necessary,” Oppong-Nkrumah said.
Economy is recovering from impact of COVID-19
On the economy, he said the country is recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest is the recovery from COVID-19 pandemic both on the health front and then on the economic front. On the economic front which is the twin crisis that always come with the pandemic, the economy is gradually finding its feet.
“We were growing averagely close to about 7% from 2017 to 2019, [then] COVID hit us. We have to shut down parts of the economy and then we went into a dip, but very quickly that recovery is coming back. Data suggest about 3.1% recovery in first quarter this year,” Nkrumah added.
“We are expecting quarter two to do pretty well as well and if we can come back to somewhere like 5 or 6% and sustain same over the next four years, then we know we are getting better.”