The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has urged the government to eschew partisan and political interferences in the implementation and management of the YouStart initiative to ensure its success.
According to the IFS, encouraging unnecessary political and partisan interference is the surest way of promoting corruption and wastage which are recipes for the failure of this “worthy intervention by the state”.
In a policy brief that provided an assessment of the 2022 budget statement, the IFS stated that it views the YouStart initiative as a worthy intervention by the state to expand employment opportunities for the youth. According to the Institute, such opportunities are currently limited, giving rise to high youth unemployment and underemployment in the country.
“However, for YouStart to be successful and avoid the failures that similar initiatives suffered in the past, the program needs to be effectively and sustainably managed. This would require targeting the YouStart support to entrepreneurial ventures or business proposals that have been rigorously vetted to ascertain their viability and sustainability, as well as their contribution to the broader development strategy of the nation.
“It would also require keeping partisan and political interferences at bay in managing or implementing the initiative, since these are sure ways of encouraging wastage and corruption, which would ultimately cause the program’s failure”.
IFS
Entrepreneurship has the potential to improve economic growth
Entrepreneurship, according to the IFS, is a vital source of production, job creation, and innovation in any economy. Therefore, the IFS underscored that the YouStart has the potential to improve economic growth in the country, if well implemented.
“Therefore, the YouStart initiative, which is intended to provide funding and other assistance to aid the development of start-ups and entrepreneurial ventures by young people, has the potential to improve economic growth and employment generation in Ghana”.
IFS
To help tackle youth unemployment by promoting youth entrepreneurship in the country, the government unveiled the YouStart initiative in the 2022 budget. This initiative, according to government, is aimed at “supporting young entrepreneurs to gain access to capital, training, technical skills, and monitoring to enable them launch and operate their own businesses”.
It is projected that YouStart, to which government has allocated GH₵1 billion in the 2022 budget and pledged an additional GH₵2 billion in 2023-2024, will result in the creation of 1 million jobs within the next three years.
Sustainability of the YouStart Initiative
As the pandemic continues to affect businesses in the country, job creation in the private sector is challenged. However, looking to government to provide employment is also not an option because “I can tell you that government’s payroll is full. We are currently spending some 60% of our revenue on remunerating some 650,000 people and that is not sustainable”, said Hon. Ken Ofori-Atta.
Despite its potentials, raising the needed funds for such a laudable initiative is a major concern for government as revenue mobilization has not been encouraging and further borrowing will also come at huge costs to the state. This may therefore, call for a collaboration with the private sector to ensure the smooth implementation of the initiative.
Luckily, the National Lottery Authority (NLA) has presented a cheque of GH₵10,000,000.00 to the Ministry of Finance as their contribution to the YouStart programme to tackle the high youth unemployment in the country. Such donations will go a long way to support the implementation of the program.
As such, the government must make judicious use of these funds with utmost sense of transparency and accountability to encourage other institutions and individuals to also contribute their ‘widow’s mite’ towards national development.
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