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Full Text: Akufo-
 Addo’s speech at 2018 media encounter
 
Welcome to the seat of the Presidency of our country, ladies and gentlemen of the media, and I wish you all a happy New Year. The start of a new year is the ideal time to take stock of the year that has just ended, and look forward to the new one. When we gathered here last July for my first interaction with the media, I promised that I would endeavour for us to meet, at least twice a year, to have a conversation about our nation, and how the government is doing. I believe this week meets the requirements of this promise, and has the added advantage of marking the first anniversary of my becoming President of our Republic. I do not intend to engage in self-adulation, or self-flagellation, for that matter. I shall, therefore, not be assigning grades or marks to myself or my government. An examinee does not mark his or her own script. I leave that either to the self-serving pronouncements of vainglorious politicians or to the apparent insights of would-be wise persons of that amorphous community, civil society. But, ladies and gentlemen, I am confident that we do, however, have a good story to tell about many of the things that we have done, and are doing, since assuming the reins of office a year ago, and I am going to use this medium to highlight some of the most important of them. I would like to start this conversation with the sad scenes that were played out in many parts of the country, some weeks ago, in all the regional capitals of our country.  Young people got up at dawn, and formed long queues in stadiums and parks, in the hope of getting a job with the Ghana Immigration Service. I know it is not a new story. Some eighty four thousand (84,000) people applying for jobs, and over forty seven thousand (47,000) of them meeting the minimum requirements as advertised, and the organisation only looking for five hundred (500) people to hire. Similar scenarios are being played out in all sectors of the public service. The Ghana Revenue Authority also advertised for various categories of
 
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staff. Some fifty nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety one (59,991) responded to the advertisement, out of which twenty thousand, one hundred and seventy seven (20,177) met the requirements, and the available vacancies are three hundred and fifty (350). The recent recruitment exercise in the Ghana Armed Forces went along similar lines. Some twenty six thousand, and thirty two (26,032) young people applied to be enlisted into the Other Ranks; twenty one thousand, and seventy three (21,073) of them qualified, and were shortlisted. The number to be taken to start training later this month is one thousand, eight hundred (1,800). The Police Service recruitment exercise tells a similar story. Some one hundred and fifty eight thousand, seven hundred and thirty four (158,734) young people applied, and seventy nine thousand, nine hundred and nine (79,909) of them met the requirements, and financial clearance has been given for two thousand (2,000) of them to be taken into the service. Once I started looking, I found similar stories all around. The grim story of youth unemployment has been a tragic part of our lives for far too long. When I became President, therefore, I knew my work was cut out. We had to do things differently, if we were going to banish the spectre of desperation, and restore hope to our youth. We inherited an economy that was in distress, choked by debt, and with macroeconomic fundamentals in disarray. We had to do things differently, and those were my marching orders to all members of the government. We have rapidly to grow and expand the economy, and that can only happen when the fundamentals are in place. The Economic Management Team has risen to the challenge, and demonstrated that doing things differently achieves positive results.  You would recall that, throughout the election campaign, we said part of the reason for the difficulties with the economy was the sole sourcing of procurement by government. Let me give you a few figures to illustrate this point.
 
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In the year 2016, the Public Procurement Authority had six hundred and twenty two (622) Sole Source Requests. Five hundred and ninety seven (597) of that number, 98%, were approved, and there were 25 Rejections. There were five hundred and ninety two (592) Requests made for Restricted Tenders, and five hundred and eighty seven (587) (99.15%) were approved, and there were five (5) Rejections. A grand total of zero savings was made. In 2017, our first year in government, three hundred and ninety four (394) Sole Sourcing Requests were made, out of which two hundred and twenty three (223) (56.6%) were approved, and one hundred and seventy one (171) (43.6%) were rejected. There were three hundred and forty six (346) Requests for Restricted Tenders, and one hundred and sixty seven (167) (48%) were approved, and one hundred and seventy nine (179) (52%) were rejected. Now here is the interesting part. The savings made over the year, as a result, amounted to GH¢145.7 million; $146.2 million;
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1.85 million and £22,400.  As my old mathematics teacher used to say, you cannot argue with figures, and such figures surely provide the incentive to open up government procurement. Our economists set to work to sort out our macroeconomic fundamentals, and to find imaginative ways to deal with the oppressive debt situation. I am glad to report that the hard work on that front is yielding positive results. The macroeconomic fundamentals have seen improvements through improved fiscal and monetary discipline. Real GDP growth has rebounded, recording a growth of 9.3% in the third quarter of 2017, against the 3.5% figure for the same period of 2016. Latest information indicates that inflation is at 11.8%, down from 15.6% at the end of December 2016. The debt situation has improved, with the annual average rate of debt accumulation of 36% in recent years declining to about 13.6%, as at September 2017. As a result, the public debt stock as a ratio of GDP is 68.3%, against the annual target of 71% for 2017, and end 2016 actual
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