Spokesperson for Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, Dr. Gideon Boako has indicated that the digitisation agenda being rolled out by the Akufo-Addo-led government will among other things reduce the cost of credit in the country.
He reiterated that Ghanaians who seek loans from financial institutions, particularly banks, to set up and grow their respective businesses will have the opportunity to obtain them at a lower cost.
Dr Boako who stated these at a news conference in Accra on Friday, observed that due to challenges of identity and traceability, banks currently end up giving out loans with higher risk premiums.
He said President Akufo-Addo’s vision of building a modern Ghanaian economy anchored on digital technology, has also led to government addressing various challenges through the introduction of the National Identification Card and the digital property address system.
He explained that the country’s tax base will be broadened, ensuring that government generates enough revenue to reduce the rate of borrowing.
“We have had years of life in Ghana where the identity and traceability of people have remained problematic. This has imposed huge risk on borrowers, hence the higher risk premium placed when people seek bank loans.
“Once the integration of the national ID and the banking databases is ready, banks will have trust and confidence in a borrower’s identity and traceability. This will obviously bring down the cost of credit,” he said.
Revenue generation & economic growth
Touching on the revenue generation and growth of the economy through digitization, Dr. Boako indicated that more job opportunities will be created for the youth.
Government, he added, is using digital solutions to increase the tax net through the national ID card system, and indicated replacement of the numbers with the GRA Tax Identification number automatically raises the number of Ghanaians with tax numbers from 4% to 86%.
“This has broadened the tax base and made it possible for many Ghanaians to be identified as potential tax payers.
“We have moved a step forward following the Vice Presidents challenge to GRA to make the processes of filing taxes easier and simple to be done using a mobile application device.
“So we see the direct impact of the digitization agenda on the potential for Ghana to mobilize more revenues domestically without overburdening the tax payer.
“We also see how doing this could potentially cut down on our debt levels and consequently help us to attain a relatively stable currency and reduce the rate of inflation,” he added.
Job creation
On job creation, Dr Boako said, “There are many people today, who have turned their home kitchens into restaurants, yet no one visits them physically to eat. They advertise using digital technology, receive orders using digital technology, receive payments using digital technology and move their incomes to bank accounts using digital technology. This is how digitization is creating jobs.”
He urged all Ghanaians to support the government in its quest to digitalize the economy.
Dr Boako reiterated that government’s digitization and digitalization agenda is a demonstration of the needed interest and commitment to create a modern Ghanaian economy that competes favourably globally and conforms to the dictates of the fourth industrial revolution.
Paradigm shift
The spokesperson for Vice President Bawumia said the development paradigm of moving from the industrial age into the technology and information age has its own transition terms such as e-commerce, e-marketing, e-business and e-money among many others.
E-governance in the public sector, he said, will therefore not be left behind.
He stressed in nearly five years, the Akufo-Addo-led government has been pursuing the digitization and digitalization agenda by using ICT as a tool to achieve better governance.
Dr Boako observed that for many post-colonial societies like Ghana that appears stacked in the old antiquated ways of doing things, technological innovations and digitization are just what are needed to leapfrog years of public administration reforms that have almost become a never-ending business, in some cases even more bureaucratic, more red-tape, more opaque and impediments to doing business.
Bawumia’s public lecture
Dr Boako stated that the Public Lecture delivered by the Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia on the digital economy at Ashesi University has generated reawakening on the potentials of digitalization and digitization for economic development.
According to him, the deployment of digital technologies can help reduce the cost of goods and services if the price build-ups of goods that occur through exchange rate exposures are understood.
He argued that a country with an increasingly depreciating currency has higher import cost that is passed on to prices of goods on the market and stressed that one means by which the currencies of countries become exposed is rising debt levels.
Trade promotion
The concept of digital technologies, Dr Boako pointed out, has also come with virtual means of trade and using digital technology for advertising thereby creating new jobs in many different sectors.
He said it has taken political will on the part of Government to put these new systems in place and stressed the infrastructure that has been put in place for digitalization is soft infrastructure and not like a road or a bridge that are physical.
This system, he said, is however a powerful tool and an expanded highway for development.
