President Akufo-Addo reiterated his commitment to resuscitating the economy of the country post the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to him, the Coronavirus Alleviation and Revitalization of Enterprise Support (CARES) initiative is a critical key to putting the struggling economy on the road to recovery.

He insisted that the CARES (Obaatan pa) Programme will also open the country up to investors.

“The world is going through very difficult times and Ghana is no exception. There is no country in the world that is escaping the ravages of both the Covid-19 and the Ukraine-Russia crisis.

“What you need to look at are the elements that are being put on the ground that look beyond the Covid-19 and Ukraine-Russia war. In Ghana, the CARES Programme is considered very credible and it is what is going to give us the opportunity to come out of this period [as] a stronger economy,”

When government launched the ¢100 billion Obaatan pa Programme in November 2020, it envisioned that the ambitious initiative would stabilize and revitalize the economy to create jobs over a three-year period.

The programme is sequenced in two phases; the stabilization phase and the medium-term revitalization phase.

Government during its launch noted that the investment is aimed at expanding commercial agriculture and attracting educated youth into agriculture; building Ghana’s Light Manufacturing industry targeting agro-processing, food import substitution, textile and pharmaceuticals; developing engineering, machine tools and ICT digital economy industries; fast-tracking digitization by expediting government digital initiatives; developing Ghana’s Housing and Construction industry; and establish Ghana as a regional Hub, leveraging its position within ECOWAS and as host of the Secretariat of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) by focusing on manufacturing, finance, mining, healthcare, aviation and logistics, digital services, petroleum, automobile, tourism, hospitality and creative arts.

Meanwhile, some economic experts have criticized government’s handling of the economy following the free fall of the cedi and downgrade of the country’s credit ratings.