A 40-year development plan for Ghana is
irrelevant because it will not afford political parties the space to implement
fully contents of their manifestos upon which they win an election to form a
government, Professor George Gyan-Baffour, Minister-designate for Planning, has
said.Speaking during his vetting by the Appointments Committee of
parliament on Monday, February 6, the Wenchi MP said: “Ghana needs a long-term
perspective plan, Ghana needs a long-term view about where we want to be in 40
years from now, but Ghana does not need a 40-year development plan.”
“The
simple reason is that the word plan connotes rigidity, it connotes the fact that
when it is there and I come with my ideas I cannot implement those ideas because
the plan will talk about the vision or the goals, it will talk about objectives,
it will talk about the implementation of projects and programmes and it will
talk about all these things, even including monitoring and
evaluation.
“So if you do it that way the parties will then say that,
what do I have left? There is nothing left for me but I went to the people to
tell them with my manifesto that this is what I want to do. Now when you come in
here and you have told me everything that I should do in 40 years, what am I
going to do [with the manifesto]?
“If you do that there is nothing that
they (parties) can do, they will violate it, so it is not a good idea to come
out with a plan as such but yes, I am all for a development agenda, I am all for
a set of goals.”
His comments fall in line with the position taken by
Senior Minister Yaw Osarfo Marfo when he said any development plan beyond 10
years is bad.
According to Mr Marfo, exigencies of world economics do not
support an idea of putting in a long term development plan that goes beyond 10
years, further stating that advanced economies no longer talk about long term
plans that go beyond 10 years.
During his vetting by the Appointments
Committee of Parliament on Friday January 20, he said: “I was involved in the
discussion of the 40-yr development plan; in fact I was consulted and I made my
views clear from day one that I did not believe in any plan in excess of 10
years because of exigencies of world economics and, therefore, I will prefer
that we restrict ourselves to a 10-year development plan.
“Dr Nii Moi
Thompson (Chair of the National Development Planning Commission) called me a
couple of times to talk about this and I gave some specific notes of my mine
particularly in the infrastructure side, but I haven’t seen the final outcome of
the development plan although I have had some inputs into it relating to the
blood of this system, which is power or energy.
They met a whole caucus
in the NPP headquarters and I made my input clear [about] the 40-year
development plan. The vice president (Dr Bawumia) and myself expressed our views
on the length of time. Now that we (NPP) are in power we are really going to
look at that programme, but as I said I made my view clearly that I did not
believe in any plan beyond 10 years and I still stand by it.
“We will
look at the 40-year development plan because it is important that every country
has a plan particular in respect to infrastructure and where there is
modification we will make it after thinking through. When you talk about
planning in Germany, nobody talks about more than 10yrs.”
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