Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has announced that the government’s digitisation agenda has achieved impressive results.
He said the agenda has helped in maximising revenue for the country through some major institutions in the country including the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and the Passport office.
Speaking at the National Development Conference under the theme ‘Moral Vision and National Development’, he noted that this has demonstrated the transformative power of technology in driving efficiency, revenue growth, and improved services across crucial sectors of the economy.
He also stated that this has been instrumental in curbing corruption.
“In times past, it used to be easy to lie about your age and get away with it, particularly in the government sector. At the port, for instance, we have introduced the paperless system, and this came with resistance. Some of the custom officers organized demonstrations against the move, but we were firm on our stance. Today, at the offices of ECG, you can buy your credit without any challenges.”
Providing data to back his claim, he noted that the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has increased its annual revenue from 450 million cedis to 1.2 million cedis after the power distribution company went digital.
He also indicated that the passport office has witnessed a significant change in its revenue mobilisation, from GHC1 million cedis to 64 million cedis.
Government has been pursuing a digitisation agenda, which has mainly been pushed by the Vice President. Various initiatives and projects aimed at embracing technology and digital transformation are integral components of this agenda.
Commenting on the development, the Vice President indicated that many challenges associated with the digitisation drive have been dealt with as a result.
“The challenges with ECG initially were that the revenues of ECG were constant and the values were the same. We looked at the architecture of revenue of ECG and we changed it. They were collecting 450 million cedis a month as revenue. We sent in a team to work on their system.
“There were sabotage attempts, such as people sending viruses into the system to destroy our work, but we were resilient and brought in a whole new architecture for ECG. Today, they make over 1 million cedis as revenues monthly. The same happened at the passport office, which was making 1 million cedis to over 65 million cedis.”