Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has assumed office as Ghana’s Finance Minister after been sworn-in on January 27, 2017, by the President.
He brings to the Ministry over 30 years’ experience in Ghanaian and international financial sector.
Mr. Ofori-Atta and twelve other Minister designates were approved by Parliament on Thursday, January 26, after going through a successful vetting process by the Appointments Committee of Parliament.
The Minister’s immediate priority is to stabilize Ghana’s macro economy and introduce policy initiatives to grow the economy for the private sector to thrive and create jobs.
“We will improve people’s lives by enhancing public finances, managing our debt and debt servicing costs, investing in critical infrastructure, and empowering the private sector to create jobs”, he said.
“He intends to work hard to get the economy growing eventually at 7% and beyond through policies and strategies that will increase revenue, reduce waste, target spending, restructuring debts and improving infrastructure,” a statement from the ministry said.
Mr. Ofori-Atta stated that the 3-year IMF programme was integral to the achievement of the government’s economic agenda.
“I am committed to the programme and will ensure that we meet all the necessary structural benchmarks. We have postponed taking the hard decisions for a long time, but we now need to fix these structural problems and get our economy growing again,” he said.
He further assured to deliver on the NPPs Manifesto pledges in spite of the daunting economic challenges.
“Some of these would be delivered in the first budget expected by end March, 2017,” he said.
Ghana’s finance Minister big hairy audacious goals
Mr. Ofori-Atta was a Co-Founder and former Chairman of the Databank Group, (a premier investment banking firm) in Ghana.
Prior to co-founding Databank in 1990, he was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and Salomon Brothers on Wall Street in New York.
He has other business interests in Insurance, Retail Banking, Private Equity, Pharmaceuticals and Real Estate.
He went to Achimota School; received a BA in Economics from Columbia University in New York and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.
MoF