Senior Partner at AB & David Africa, David Ofosu-Dorte, says the John Dramani Mahama administration has performed creditably in its first year in office by stabilising key sectors of the economy and halting further decline following a difficult economic period.<\/p>\n
He made the assessment during a roundtable discussion on John Mahama 2.0: Thematic Assessment of Year One.<\/p>\n
According to Mr Ofosu-Dorte, the government\u2019s immediate responsibility upon assuming office was to arrest deterioration caused by the debt exchange programme, IMF negotiations and broader economic instability.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was required when we had moved from a situation of DDEP, an IMF situation and all the chaos surrounding it. For me, any good manager will tell you that in such a situation, the first thing is to stop deterioration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On road infrastructure, Mr Ofosu-Dorte noted that the administration has taken steps to prevent further decay of existing roads.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne is the road sector; if a road is deteriorating, what has been put in place to ensure that the deterioration stops? And I think there are a lot of examples which have come on your station\u2014quite a lot of examples of road projects. But this is stage one. Stop deterioration doesn\u2019t mean you should rest on your laurels,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Touching on the energy sector, he commended the government for tackling long-standing debt challenges and initiating payment arrangements to clear arrears.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe energy sector debt is a huge one; it has been perennial; it has been with us since about 2007, thereabout. There are times it appears to go and come back. It fluctuates. I did hear that as of December 31, 2025, GH\u00a21.4 billion in arrears have been paid.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m aware there have been some arrangements to pay the arrears over a period. It appears they are ahead of schedule with payments. That is a significant attempt to stop deterioration, and that is quite important,\u201d he remarked.<\/p>\n
Mr Ofosu-Dorte also praised efforts to address student accommodation challenges, particularly at the University of Ghana.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother example is the promise to supply student accommodation. I\u2019m sure you have heard about the 10,000-student hostel for the University of Ghana, where the university says it has a shortage of about 40,000 beds.<\/p>\n
\u201cAttempting to supply a quarter of it in year one, even though it has not been achieved, is an attempt to stop deterioration. It\u2019s by these I measure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On power supply, he observed notable stability in the sector, suggesting that the era of persistent outages\u2014popularly referred to as dumsor\u2014has largely been contained.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s take the power sector apart from the payment. I don\u2019t know if dumsor has returned or \u2018dum sie sie\u2019. To the best of my knowledge, from where I stay and work, there has been a large amount of stability,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n
He attributed this improvement to enhanced transparency and improved cash-flow management within the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).<\/p>\n
\u201cHow was the power debt paid? It appears it was simple transparency\u2014to see what goes into the ECG, what the cash-flow mechanism is like, and how we are able to collect and apply a method that we have talked about but has never been implemented. That is a good attempt to stop deterioration,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Mr Ofosu-Dorte concluded that, judged on roads, power stability and student accommodation, the Mahama administration has recorded a strong performance in its first year in office.<\/p>\n
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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senior Partner at AB & David Africa, David Ofosu-Dorte, says the John Dramani Mahama administration has performed creditably…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[79],"class_list":{"0":"post-22561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ghana","8":"tag-ghana"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}