President John Evans Atta Mills yesterday rolled into action the year 2011 with great expectation and confidence that it will be a year to witness a massive improvement on all fronts.
In a New Year message to usher Ghanaians into 2011, President Mills said “with commitment, perseverance and determination coupled with hard work, we shall overcome all difficulties and move towards building a better Ghana”.
He said the vision and purposefulness of his administration to build a strong, united nation, and improve the lives of Ghanaians could only manifest, if “we spend a lot more time looking for things that unite us than those which divide us”.
“If we devote much attention on things that unite us than those which separate us form one another, we would appreciate that Ghana is a blessed country,” he said.
The President reaffirmed his declaration of 2011 as a year of action, saying his commitment to invest in the people and build infrastructure was non-negotiable.
He said the country would witness an unprecedented strong and resilient economy, with heavy investment in infrastructure, giving an assurance that the government would transform the economy from its dependency on the export of raw agricultural commodities and minerals to a diversified and prosperous industrial nation.
President Mills said his administration would execute many interventions to transform the country’s economy and the lives of the people of Ghana, stressing, “We are committed to working together as a team to make this change happen.”
On energy, he said the focus would be to create a national energy policy framework, which would be the foundation of an oil and gas-driven industrial architecture and stressed that the investments that would be required to achieve that transformation were considerable and needed to be fast-tracked in order to achieve rapid development within the shortest possible time.
President Mills said the “action: year would witness a massive development in the educational sector with the establishment of two new public universities in the Volta and Brong Ahafo regions.
He said other parts of the country would also witness the springing up of education al facilities with eh construction of a modern sports complex to serve the cluster of educational institutions, including the University of Cape Coast, in the Cape Coast Metropolitan Area.
A memorandum of understanding which Ghana signed with eh China Exim Bank supporting the implementation of the e-Government Platform Project which sought to connect 140 locations comprising ministries, departments and agencies across the country and enhance the utilization of information technology for improving the efficiency and productivity of the government machinery would take off.
The President mentioned the Eastern Corridor, the STX Housing, the Constitutional Review, among other projects, as some of the initiatives that would bring massive employment into the country and help build the economy as form this year.
“The first two years saw a lot of work on the ground but 2011 will witness a solid take-off from the foundation to affect the lives of majority of our people,” he stressed.
“It is about consolidating the gains we have made and cementing these gains. From net hear Ghanaians will see what the President has promised,” he said.
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