Coronavirus has saved us GH₵200m on travels, seminars – Ken Ofori-Atta praises Zoom

Coronavirus and its restrictions on travels and meetings has helped the government saved more than GHC200 million on seminars and travel expenses, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has indicated.

According to him, the estimated budget for government travels and seminars was GHC330 million but only GHC93millon has been used due to the COVID_19 restrictions.

“We have been working on zoom and it is incredible the amount of work we can do, we cut down our budget on travels and seminars…we have about GHC140 million which we are not going to use,” he suggested.

The money saved according to Mr. Ofori-Atta projects how much the government would save if the Ghanaian economy is digitalized.

“…So, you begin to see what type of saving you have if we were to digitalized the economy so we can do much more together and also get our educational system going” he noted.

Advancing the economic digitalization agenda, the Finance Minister said the government was strategizing on ways to absorb the about 1.2million Senior High School graduates coming out.

“If you begin to look at the 1.2 million Akufo-Addo graduates coming out of Senior High School it’s not everybody that is going to get into the university so we need to begin to think of online systems which would ensure that there is life long education easily accessible and cheaper”

“So that is the exciting part, the realization of how powerful digitalization would be and we are going to put a lot of money into it,” he said in an interview on JoyNews’ PM Express.