Executive Director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), Prof. Peter Qaurtey has predicted that until Ghana becomes intentional as a state, she risks being labeled a lower-middle income country for a longer tenure or even retrogress, that is make nuisance of the economic success chalked so far.
Speaking exclusively to happyghana.com and Happy Kasiebor, on the sidelines of the official launch of the World Report 2024, in Accra, the economist said, “…it will take Ghana some 26 years to break free from the lower-middle income status to upper-middle income status or higher middle income”. He said Ghana’s overall development has lagged behind although pockets of growth have recorded in some sectors of the economy.
Intentionality, he argues, is the conduit through which Ghana can skip l the risk of getting stuck in the lower-middle income trap. Citing an example, the economics don, shared Ghana has over the years made no efforts towards transformation. Using the agricultural sector to buttress his point, Prof. Qaurtey said, “one thing we lack is transformation. For example, our agriculture has been rain-fed; agriculture has been exporting raw materials. It has not changed much”.
Proposing key intentional steps to make the agricultural sector productive, Prof. Quartey, said key stakeholders should start pondering over being intentional about irrigation to wean Ghana’s agricultural sector off rains, adding value to agricultural products instead of exporting them in their raw states, and training the required manpower the sector needs instead of training human capital that are only good at clerical skills. This, if replicated in key sectors, will increase the propensity of having substantial impact on the economy in the long term.
Accordingly, he argues Ghana should as a matter of urgency encode all its intentional long term policies and strategies in a national plan that government’s will be mandated to execute. The phenomenon of boycotting the implementation of national development planning policies and sticking to four-year medium term policies, he shares, is worrying. “We have not done well in terms of development plans. Often-times new governments come and throw the national plans away, develop medium term strategies, after four years those documents and new ones are developed”.
“I think any equipment has a manual. There has to be a manual. There has been a development plan, we cannot just get up and say this is what we would like to do. There has to be a policy document, it must be costed, implemented until it begins to yield the needed results. That’s why we have always been advocating for development plan”, Prof. Quartey intimated.
It is imperative, he says that Ghana intentionally pursue sustainable policies, support investments in certain key areas of the economy if the state is indeed prepared to become an exception out of the norm of breaking free from the middle-income trap.
Sefah-Danquah.