Reverend Dr. Samuel Worlanyo Mensah, an Economist, and the Executive Director of the Center for Greater Impact Africa (CGIA) policy think tank has called on the government to as a matter of urgency, activate policies to revamp key sectors of Ghana’s economy for sustainable growth.
According to the Executive Director of the Center for Greater Impact Africa, industries play a critical role in major economic reconstruction and their blueprints are available for Ghana to learn from for a holistic industrialization. He said the local industry created jobs, helped improve incomes, and thus reduced poverty, introduced and promoted new technologies.
Reverend Dr. Samuel Worlanyo Mensah explained that holistic industrialization would carry along its value chain, huge infrastructural development, and economic transformation. The Executive Director of CGIA, thus, urged the government to train and support local industries to lift the struggling economy.
The economist noted that industrialization and a revamp of the agriculture sector would enhance Ghana’s growth and move the country out of the control of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with its ramifications like the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme. “Such a smart move will help reduce the rate at which home-used, cheap and substandard goods are dumped on our markets, killing local industries,” he said.
Industrialization to Transform the Economy
Dr. Samuel Worlanyo Mensah averred that focusing on industrialization would help in transforming the economy and improve productivity. He suggested that special attention must be given to industries, agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, and the blue economy to help achieve the balance of payment surplus. “The government needs to take advantage of Ghana’s oil exploration and revamp the Tema Oil Refinery to perform to expectation,” he added.
“The government should roll out administrative policies to reduce the importation of goods that are produced locally. The government must support local industries with more resources to produce on a large scale. Ghana has a great future in industrialization. Therefore, training and supporting the local industries is a key factor in reviving the economy.”
Dr. Samuel Worlanyo Mensah
Meanwhile, Reverend Dr Samuel Worlanyo Mensah, predicted that the government’s Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) will negatively affect the culture of investment among Ghanaians in the future.
Rev. Dr Mensah accessing the impact of the DDEP on Ghana’s economy indicated that the programme would derail the confidence of Ghanaians to invest in government instruments due to the fear of uncertainty of future happenings. He added that the government’s inability to honour its obligations to the bondholders would not only kill people’s interest in investment but would also affect Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and local businesses.
According to the Executive Director, with the local businesses, those who invested in bonds and have plans to use their coupons to pay workers and expand their businesses now must look for other alternatives as it would have an adverse effect on them. “More businesses will collapse, especially when there will be no coupon rate to be paid to the bondholders, meanwhile their principal amount is also locked for a number of years,” he said.
Dr Mensah noted that exempting the pensioners who have served the country during their working days and now rely on their bonds to survive would not affect the gains that the government said it has made in the signing of bondholders unto the programme as its target has already been met.
Rev. Dr Mensah also called on the government to provide the public with the details of those who have purported to have signed onto the programme to enable the public and experts to cross-check on the claim. According to him, the figures could be exaggerated.
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