Comments by government communicators about the
economy of the country demonstrate that they have lost touch with the actual
economic situation in the country, Professor Godfred Bokpin, Head of Finance at
the University of Ghana Business School, has said.
According to him, the
campaign promises of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) ahead of
the December 7 presidential and parliamentary elections are unrealistic and
unachievable.
President John Mahama, during his presentation of the
highlights of the NDC’s 2016 manifesto on Tuesday September 13, made 130
promises as he bids for a second term of office. He indicated that Ghana’s
economic transformation will take off next year if he is re-elected for another
four-year term.
But speaking on the campaign promises made by the
president in an interview with Emefa Apawu, host of the 505 news programme on
Class91.3FM on Wednesday, September 14, Prof Bokpin said: “We have to be
realistic in our promises and I want to believe that one thing that the NDC
could actually do is…performance analysis of its own governance, analyse the
variance. You wanted to achieve this, you couldn’t. What were the reasons? That
will inform the kind of promises they will make going forward because Ghanaians
are not looking for high-level promises which, really, I don’t think we will be
able to achieve. I think we want a government that will be realistic, a
government that will say this is how far we can go and this is the level of
efficiency that we will want to bring to bear.
He added: “…I don’t think
that they (NDC) are being realistic. Sometimes I get the impression that their
understanding of the economy, with all due respect…the way they talk sometimes I
don’t think they are really on the ground. I don’t want to blame the president
here because the president doesn’t need to know everything. His advisors (and)
economic team should be able to be realistic and be frank with (him) as to what
is actually achievable given our resource constraints.
“President Mahama
can do well by assuring Ghanaians that when it comes to efficiency, corruption,
these are things that (he is) actually going to deal with in (his) second term
because that is where Ghana’s problem is.
Ghana’s problems are the level
of inefficiency, the level of corruption, public sector attitude to work, the
lack of performance indicators and how to measure it, the wastage in the public
sector culminating in a huge wage bill, any government that will come and cannot
put a hold on these things cannot do well.” |
