editorial of the Daily Searchlight Friday, 28th July,, 2022
An organization calling itself the Coalition for Democratic Accountability and Inclusive Governance has stated that Government must not wait for the outcome of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) before taking “drastic” actions to salvage the economy.
The Coalition also known as Citizens’ Coalition said a delay in taking urgent interventions pending outcome of a negotiation where the demand of government may not be fully met could further deteriorate the economic conditions.
Speaking on behalf of the Group at a press briefing in Accra on Wednesday, Mr Kojo Pumpuni, a member and the Director of Advocacy and Policy Engagement at CDD-Ghana, said government must work on short short-term solutions to stem the tide of uncertainty and fear among citizens.
That, he said should include measures to drastically reduce expenditure and mitigate cost of food, transport, and fuel.
He urged the President to urgently reduce the total number of Ministers and Deputies to not more than 70 as that could reduce public expenditure and save the country more than GH₵5 million a year.
The Daily Searchlight believes that the solution to the country’s economic woes would not be found with another program at the ministrations of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other international and multi-lateral agencies.
We have stated before, and we must continue to reiterate, that the solutions to Ghana’s problems, must be homegrown, home developed and implemented here.
The solutions, short, medium and long term, must be to cut down our coats according to our sizes, engage in a rapid expansion of agriculture, attempt to boost local industrialization and processing, and best of all, an attempt to change our consumption patterns, which is at the heart of the nation’s problems.
We have stated before, and we must continue to reiterate, that a nation that imports pens, pencils and toothpicks, but insists on exporting raw timber in logs and unprocessed cocoa, is bound to be in the position that Ghana finds itself. In short, the economic fundamentals are weak, and would remain same, unless we change our attitude and decide on an aggressive policy of import substitution and processing.
We are afraid, that the current pursuit of the IMF, is a wasted effort, and that it would end the nation exactly where we are in a few months, with the position even more desperate than it is today.
Unless we do what is necessary, and learn to chart a different path from what we are pursuing, the future would only portend a worse situation than what we have today.
(This article was first published in the column EDITORIAL of the Daily Searchlight of Friday, 28th July,, 2022. The Daily Searchlight appears on the newsstands of Ghana every working day and PDF versions are available for sale online twenty-four hours a day all day throughout the world on www.ghananewsstand.com).
