I offer best opportunity to lead NPP to victory — Alan

With barely four days to the expanded national delegates congress, Mr Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen, one of the leading presidential aspirants of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has declared that “he offers the best opportunity to lead the party back to power in 2012”.
He said he was not only an attractive candidate to NPP members but also to Ghanaians at large, particularly those who fall into the category of floating voters, who constitute almost 30 per cent of the electorate in general.
Addressing a media encounter in Accra yesterday as part of his final leg of campaign prior to the August 7, 2010 congress, Mr Kyerematen, who was a Minister of Trade, Industry and Presidential Special Initiatives in the Kufuor Administration, said with such attributes and qualities, he would not only win the general elections, but would also have the capacity to build a united prosperous Ghana.
Mr Kyerematen noted that annexing power from the incumbent NDC government would not be an easy task and would only not be predicated on the failures or otherwise of the Mills led administration but would require a new type of leadership for the NPP based on dynamism, charisma, affability, humility, God-fearing, dedicated, inspiring and action oriented personality.
He said such a person must also be young because the age factor was now a new phenomenon in world politics which had been characterised by an emerging new generation of leaders like President Barack Obama of the US and David Cameron of the United Kingdom.
He said the most critical challenge confronting Ghana was producing a leader who had demonstrated over the years that he had experience, exposure and capacity to initiate and direct the implementation of programmes that would create jobs for the people of Ghana and improve their income levels.
Mr Kyerematen said the party would also need a leader like himself who would be able to build bridges between different interest groups in the party and mobilise the collective strength of all members towards the campaign effort in 2012, because the party had in the last three years held two presidential primaries which had imposed a great responsibility on whoever would lead the party.
Diverting his attention to national issues, he said Ghana’s future prosperity was captured in two sets on strategic long term vision which were the attainment of middle income status by 2015 and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
He said so far various governments both past and present have embarked on a number of programmes and interventions with varying degrees of success in terms of efficiency and effectiveness towards the attainment of these goals.
Mr Kyerematen said should he become the President of Ghana, he would re-focus the nation’s attention and effort in different direction and dimensions in order to achieve the timelines and targets imposed by Ghana’s vision as well as the Millennium Development Goals.
He said poverty and unemployment were the most critical developmental issues confronting Ghana, and to solve them he would create jobs for the masses and improve the living standards of majority of Ghanaians.
He proposed a broad policy framework anchored on three pillars namely, investing in the productive sector of the economy, investing in quality health and education as well as deepening democratic governance.
Mr Kyerematen said if he was elected President, he would direct public investments on infrastructure facilities that directly support private sector investments in the productive sectors of the economy.
He said for that to be realised , he promised to promote the establishment of a one billion dollar public investments syndicated infrastructure fund that would focus on the provision of roads, energy and water.
He said his administration would re-engineer the current tax regime to enhance private sector competitiveness by changing the tax structure to reduce the cost of production in industry, agriculture and other productive sectors by significantly reducing Value Added Tax on imports and rather seek to mobilise more tax revenue from corporate tax.
Mr Kyerematen said as President he would work with the Bank of Ghana to reduce the prime rate to below 10 per cent to send a strong signal to the banking sector to reduce the cost of borrowing.
On education and health, he proposed that he would provide a combination of policy instruments and incentives to support the private sector, working together with banks to invest in the education and health sector as a means to reduce the burden on government in financing these two sectors.
He said he would also consolidate the already existing arms of government, security agencies, governance institutions in the country.
Mr Kyerematen said he would also enhance the level of financial support to these institutions, improve their human resource capacity and introduce new and appropriate systems, processes and procedures to enhance their operations efficiency and effectiveness.