…including 8,000 high-paying jobs annually
By Buertey Francis BORYOR
Presidential aspirant and leader of the New Force Movement, Nana Kwame Bediako, has promised that his government will create 800,000 high-paying jobs per year within Ghana’s 16 regions if elected president in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
This, he said, would amount to creating over 8 million jobs in the Movement’s decade-long plan and result in 50,000 people getting jobs in each region.
Mr. Bediako made this promise during a livestream to unveil his Movement’s manifesto titled ‘The 12 Pillars of Economic Freedom Key Policy’ in Accra on September 1, 2024.
Additionally, he said that with respect to agro-reserves his administration will take advantage of the country’s vast arable lands to establish a seedling bank that would guarantee food security for the next eighty years while also creating cross-border plantations.
Also, regarding energy sources he said these would shift from overreliance on hydro-power to a collection of different power generation sources – including wind-turbines, solar farms, thermal and biomass, among others.
“With almost 50 percent of Africa’s population lacking access to energy, we can use multiple sources of energy to position yourselves as akey player in the continent’s energy landscape to support its energy demands,” he added.
Furthermore, he said, it will introduce a new tax policy called ‘Tax Reserves’ to replace the existing tax system – which he described as inefficient. With this policy, he noted, multinational companies extracting the nation’s mineral resources will pay taxes not in cash but in kind – a percentage of all the mineral resources they extract for us to keep in our reserves.
“The tax reserves would help us reduce and restrict corruption in our tax system as multinationals would no longer have to understate their profits,” he added.
Moreover, he promised that the New Force government would create a technology hub that can transform raw materials into industrial and consumer electronic products that feed the regional, continental and global markets.
Mr. Bediako added that regarding nuclear energy, his government will enhance the country’s energy security and provide a foundation for a greener and more prosperous economy – while leveraging uranium from Niger to build West Africa’s first nuclear power plant on an industrial scale to support what he called “the 16 regional industrial revolution”.
He further promised that his government would build a data centre to control information technology in the country and beyond; an investment which he said would pave the way for large-scale data operations, crypto mining, tokenisation and minting of coins.
The manifesto highlights twelve essential pillars that aim to promote economic freedom and prosperity: including Regional Industrial Revolution, Ghana’s First Water Transportation and sub-Regional Railway, Energy City and Technology Hub, Reserves, National Sovereign Wealth Fund and The SSNIT Revolution.
The leader of the New Force Movement announced plans to create a national sovereign wealth fund, which he described as the “new IMF,” aimed at preserving the country’s heritage value. “In the past, our minerals have been extracted for pennies. We are ending that. The national sovereign wealth fund will be independent and autonomous, designed to collect and protect our reserves. These reserves will hold more wealth than the IMF and World Bank could ever offer,” he stated.
He also proposed raising the country’s first US$50 billion by empowering immigration services to introduce a ‘citizenship package’ to monetize Ghanaian citizenship.
Additionally, he pledged to govern the country with a lean administration consisting of 12 ministries, each headed by a single minister, calling this approach “The Apostolic Governance”.
He also pledged to build inter-regional railway connectivity and water transportation.
