‘The eight-year cycle of ‘blame-game’ that we see and hear from one incoming government after another must stop. The stage of under-development that Ghana still finds itself calls for a radical change in our politics and economic,’ Bishop Akolgo, Executive Director of ISODEC and Institute for Fiscal Policy disclosed this at a day’s national dialogue on economic transformation in Ghana.
According to him, Ghana rather needs a national consensus on key development issues to take it to the next logical level of growth and development.
Continuing, he emphasized that the country needs to build a sustainable ‘social pact’ among the key stakeholders of development within a framework.
He said the oil find should serve as a catalyst for transforming the national economy within an industrial policy underpinned by a proactive local content, value-addition and indigenization all embedded in a vision of extractives.
This investment, he added, requires broad consensus building between government, employers and labour, as well as citizens for a minimum period of time of about five years.
He cited some changes that call for adjustment of the economy to better respond to the changing times and needs.
Continuing, he opined that states in developing countries like Ghana should upgrade their capacity to be able to respond to national and global changes posed by economic globalization.
Daniela Kuzu, Resident Director, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, on her part, called for the modernization of the agricultural sector, especially the processing industry which is highly underdeveloped.
The export of raw materials such as cocoa, beans, timber, gold and oil is putting the country at risk and nobody can estimate the next downfall of world market prices for specific raw materials that will affect Ghana, she added.
‘During this time of Ghana joining the oil-producing countries, it is a great opportunity to think about the structure of the economy in general to avoid the fate of the ‘research curse’.
By Charles Nixon Yeboah
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