My gov’t will deal with corruption through digitalization and cashless society -Bawumia Assures

The 2024 Presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia , says his government will deal with corruption through digitalization and a cashless society.

He noted that all governments have struggled with the canker of corruption in the society and that people have been killed for corruption, and people have been jailed for corruption but yet it persists.

He revealed that the Ghanacard has enabled government to basically eliminate ghost workers from the CAGD payroll, SSNIT payroll and National service payroll and that one of the most potent weapons against corruption is transparency.

“Many corrupt activities are cash-based. Apart from the obvious economic benefits of moving in the direction of a cashless society, the literature does indicate that the more electronic payments are used in transactions as opposed to cash, the more there is traceability and therefore the less the corruption. I would like to bring Ghana close to a cashless economy in the shortest possible time.”

Dr. Bawumia said the Bank of Ghana, has made a lot of progress in this direction by putting in place a lot of the systems and infrastructure required which includes mobile money interoperability, merchant interoperability, Universal QRCode payment system, Gh-Link, debit cards, Ezwich, and GhanaPay. We have put in place the necessary infrastructure for Ghana to go cashless.  
 
“Recently the Bank of Ghana has completed a pilot of a digital version of the Ghana cedi in Sefwi Wiawso. This is known as central bank digital currency (CBDC) or e-cedi. The e-cedi is designed to work online and offline and will be launched by the Bank of Ghana in due course.”

The NPP flagbearer is optimistic that the e-cedi, will be the ultimate weapon in Ghana’s fight against corruption because it will provide transparency, reduce the risk of fraud, robbery, tax avoidance, and money laundering since it will be easy to track the movement of money and identify suspicious activity as well as quickening the pace of Ghana’s move towards a cashless or near cashless society.

“We will also implement blockchain technology and smart contracts for secure data exchange and transparent e-government services. Employing a distributed ledger technology improves transparency and efficiency. This will make all government transactions permanently traceable and not subject to alteration.  I want Ghana to be the first country in Africa and one of very few in the world to do this.”

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