President John Mahama has taken a short annual leave commencing today, December 23, 2013.

A brief statement issued by the Presidency said; "The President and his family left Accra Monday morning to the United Arab Emirates for the Christmas holiday. 

In his absence, H.E. Vice President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur will act as President. 

Earlier Monday, President Mahama announced government's plan to team up with organized labour from next year to introduce a performance enhancing system to monitor productivity.

Addressing staff at the Osu Castle, President Mahama, said measuring productivity was one of the main reasons, why government introduced the Single Spine pay policy.

He however, pointed out that the real objective for the pay policy is yet to be achieved.

“We have been talking about productivity. When we conceived the idea of Single Spine, [it was to increase productivity and improve the reward system of public sector worker and enhance equity in terms of remuneration].

“We only concentrate on equity and improving the reward system and we normally are very quite on productivity

“In the coming year, we are going to work with organized labour and see how we can put in place performance enhancing systems so that all public services are able to put in their best", President Mahama intimated.

According to him, despite the challenges government is facing this year, he is assuring Ghanaians his government is on course to deliver on all the promises it has made.

“It is our intention to transform the economy of this country and make it more diverse and make it stand on more pillars than it currently stands on.

Aside from that, it is our intention to deliver on all promises that we made to the people of Ghana; [to provide increased access to secondary education, quality health care, reliable, affordable and efficient electricity supply, good quality drinking water, improve sanitation service, upgrade airports and expand the ports] in order that we can put this infrastructure and lift Ghana from being a lower middle income country to a full scale middle income country”, President Mahama noted.

The President, however, says the intended promises made to Ghanaians can be achieved if staff at the Presidency offers government the needed support.

“But whatever, our vision, we cannot achieve this, if the staff at the presidency don’t solidly support the government to achieve this”, he stressed.