Seven ministries in the first term of the President Akufo-Addo administration have been scraped and aligned with other Ministries.
They include aviation, Business Development, Inner City and Zongo Development, Monitoring and Evaluation, Planning, Regional Re-organisation and Development, and Special Development Initiatives.
A statement from the Office of the President indicates that Mr. Akufo-Addo effected this realignment because these special-purpose Ministries have achieved the purposes for which they were established.
The Office of the Senior Minister, it said, has, however, been abolished.
The President has decided there will be no Deputy Regional Ministers and at an appropriate date, in accordance with the Constitution, he will submit to Parliament the list of all Deputy Ministers of State for approval.
Director of Communication at the Presidency, Eugene Arhin who issued the statement disclosed that President Akufo-Addo will appoint a Minister for Public Enterprises, who will be operating directly under the ambit of the Presidency, who will oversee a major restructuring of the entire state-owned enterprises sector to improve the productivity and profitability of the sector.
A Minister of State, he said, has also been nominated, and, if approved, will be assigned to the Ministry of Works and Housing, in addition to the substantive Minister, to give special focus to the critical issue of affordable, mass housing, envisaged as one of the priorities of the President’s second term.
He stated that activities of the Inner City and Zongo Development Ministry will be brought under the Presidency, with a Co-ordinator appointed to supervise, as well as exercise oversight responsibility over the Zongo Development Fund.
“The newly-renamed Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development will be tasked with overseeing the outstanding activities of the erstwhile Regional Re-organisation and Development Ministry.”
“Matters to do with the Special Development Initiatives Ministry will be co-ordinated from the Presidency, as will be those of the Monitoring and Evaluation Ministry. The Aviation Ministry is to be merged into an enlarged Ministry of Transport, with activities of the Ministry of Planning also being subsumed under the Ministry of Finance.”
“The Business Development Ministry is to be merged with the Ministry of Trade and Industry. A new Minister for Energy is to be appointed, who will be assisted by deputy Ministers, one of whom will be an indigene of the Western Region,” the statement said.
