Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has highlighted the benefits that the economy is deriving from the digitalization agenda of the government.
He stated that digitalization is tackling the issue of corruption in the acquisition of government services such as passports and the clearing of goods at the ports, because human intervention has been reduced with the introduction of the Ghana Card identification system.
He said these in an address he delivered on digital economy at the 20th edition of the Ghana Club 100 Awards on Saturday, December 9.
“One of the areas that we can help our private sector immensely is to transition from the informal economy that we have in many countries, especially in Ghana. When we came into office we were facing some major challenges in the area of informal economy. Before you can really build an economy that is going to be transformational, you need to take care of major problems that are in the informal economy.
“You look at an economy in the informal sense which turned to be undisciplined, the society is undisciplined because the economy is informal and there are no consequences for bad actions, you have a society where corruption prevails, you have lawlessness, you have a tax dodging society, you have an unbanked society, you have a loan repayment dodging society, identity fraud, people assuming identities of others, lack of address systems, age cheating, fake insurance, fake birth certificates, fake passports, no functional address systems, ghost workers on government payrolls.
“These ills of the informal economy that we really inherited made it very difficult for the economy to transform to its potential. That is why we set out to formalize the economy to make sure that the economy works in a transparent system. That area of formalization of the economy we realized heavily on digitalization of the economy to formalize the economy.
“This is why we have been moving sturdily and we have made a lot of progress in this particular area. Of course, the anchor for the digitalization programme has been the Ghana Card that we issued. Today, we have enrolled over a 17million people on the Ghana Card, today we have linked all bank accounts to the Ghana Card, and linked all SIM cards to the Ghana Card, TIN is your Ghana Card number, NHIS number is your Ghana Card number, today we have linked the Ghana Card to the Controller and Accountant General Department payroll. Today we are increasing this formalization of the economy as a result of digitalisation, we are digitalizing all government services through Ghana.gov.gh and so on.
“All these bring transparency and that helps businesses, it makes the system clearer, it reduces corruption because you can get services without actually going to meet anybody who will demand a bribe,” the flagbearer of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) said.