President John Mahama has promised to initiate steps towards creating five more administrative regions to bring to 15, the number of regions in the country.

“We currently have 10 regions. We believe that it is possible to increase the number of regions to 15,” he said, while giving highlights of the National Democratic Congress 2016 manifesto in Accra on Tuesday.

He said the next NDC government will set up a Commission of enquiry to explore the viability or otherwise of increasing the number of regions. “So we will set up a commission of enquiry that will look at the viability of increasing the number of administrative regions of Ghana from 10 to 15.

“The commission will receive petitions and based on those petitions they will look at the creation of those regions if it’s a viable option or not and it is based on that recommendation we will trigger that constitutional processes,” he said.

The president’s promise come at the back of a similar one made by the flag-bearer of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Akufo-Addo in August.

He promised to create a “Western-North” region out of the current Western Region. Nana Akufo- Addo grounded his decision on the fact that “a significant proportion of Ghana’s natural resources, such gold and cocoa, as well as food stuff” come from that part of the country.

“It is, thus, about time the ‘Western-North’ became its own separate, independent region. We are going to do that in Nana Akufo-Addo’s government. The Constitution (Article 5) has created ways by which this can happen, and we will go through the prescribed methods towards achieving this,” he said.