Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Seth Terkper says the private sector’s expectation of government in stabilizing the economy is overly exaggerated.
He said: “The private sector complains when government tax it, meanwhile, the Ghana Revenue Authority generates ’barely 13 billion’ cedis to pay the public servants, run the government and also invest in infrastructure.
Sometimes the expectation from even the private sector about what government is capable of doing is very much exaggerated…’’
Speaking at the Graphic-Fidelity Economic dialogue on the state of the Ghanaian economy in Accra, the Minister noted that given the nation’s output, government is unable to provide the capital needs of private sector and social interventions in education and health.
‘’Given our output and given our desire to maintain a liberal tax regime, that has benefitted us then it means that the private sector has to do more,’’ Mr Terkper said.
He proposed that going forward, the country and private sector should be thinking about a development bank, “a bank that is big enough to go into areas like long term financing of mortgages and others; we do not have that yet, even if we have it, it is not big enough.’’
”We should be an economy which grows its financial sector, its real sector and create jobs so that the graduates we are producing in this country will find jobs,” he concluded.