Ghana’s Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has ended speculation about his intention to run in the 2024 presidential elections after his political surrogates picked up nomination forms on his behalf from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) headquarters today to make his political ambitions unambiguous.
The NPP presidential primary nomination process was opened today May 26, 2023, after the party published the date for the opening of nominations and modalities for the conduct of the primaries through a statement issued by its General Secretary, Justin Kodua Frimpong, on Thursday 25th May 2023. The statement said the Party’s presidential nomination process shall remain open from today May 26th until June 24, 2023.
Vice President Bawumia is the latest to add his name to the growing list of presidential candidates from the camp of the ruling NPP administration. The crowded list includes former Minister for Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Mr. Kwadwo Alan Kyerematen, former trade minister, Hon Joe Ghartey, former Minister for Railways, Honorable Addai Nimo, former MP for Mampong, among others.
The NPP General Secretary noted in his statement that all aspiring presidential candidates would be required to make a non-refundable deposit of GHC 50,000.00 through a banker’s draft issued to the New Patriotic Party National Headquarters in Accra as the payee.
Dr. Bawumia has been described by his peers as one of the most transformational leaders of Ghana. He has been the principal leader in the integration of Ghana’s economic trading platforms and financial technology systems to enhance business transactions in both the micro and macro business space.
Vice President Bawumia’s expanse experience in economics and financial engineering would come in handy. Having served as the Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Zimbabwe during one of the country’s debilitating economic challenges under the rule of the late Robert Mugabe, a Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Ghana and a leading member of the current Ghana Economic Management Team.
During his tenure as the Head of the Monetary Policy and Financial Stability Department at the Bank of Ghana, under the President Kufour Administration, Dr. Bawumia was part of the architects who introduced and implemented the inflation-targeting framework which made Ghana’s currency, the Cedi, one of the best-performing currencies in the world.
As Vice President and a senior member of the NPP government’s Economic Management Team, Dr. Bawumia was instrumental in helping to grow Ghana’s economic output from a capricious 2.1 -3.4 percent (gross domestic product) GDP growth rate in the 2015-2016 fiscal period to a record 8.1 percent GDP growth rate in 2017. Ghana’s economic output continued to grow at a space of 6.5 percent rate in GDP after 2017 until the covid-19 pandemic and the economic complications from the Russian-Ukraine war upended world food security, trade, energy prices, shipping costs, and economic activities.
In the wake of the harsh economic crisis facing many developing countries post Covid-19, Ghana, which was on a path to economic stability and innovation in its financial sector, had to accept an economic bail-out arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for a loan of $3bn to shore up its balance of payment and budget issues. As a condition, Ghana has agreed to make some deep cuts to some of its discretionary expenditures, increase local revenue and improve and maximize the country’s tax mobilization efforts.
