We have failed to build a resilient economy – Dr Gyeke-Dako
Senior lecturer at the University of Ghana Business School, Dr. Agyapomaa Gyeke Dako, has indicated that over the years the country has not worked hard enough to build a remarkable and resilient economy.
According to her, the current government and the past ones, have not been able to come up with resilient economic measures to help the economy withstand domestic and international shocks.
She noted that the economic issues presently facing the country require long term solutions.
Her comments comes at the back of the recent state of the economy lecture given by the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, adding that she agrees with him on the assertion that the economy was doing better prior to the pre-pandemic.
‘’I was happy to hear him admit that we are in challenging times and there is no doubt that we know that we are in challenging times because at some point one of the things he said is that, their performance has been quite remarkable, so just for the fact that he used the word quite, clearly tells us that it hasn’t been so remarkable’’.
‘’And that boils down to the fact that over the years, we have not managed to build a resilient economy. And so with shocks here and there, we see that our economy keeps turning around every now and then and so I do get him and I do hear him when he says that the economy was doing well before the covid, there is no doubt that the covid has actually put a strain on our economy and not just our economy, so many other economies. So I do hear him when he says that’’.
‘’It is also important for us to understand that the issues that has brought us this far, are issues that require long term solutions. And over the years not just with this government, we have not been able to sit and get those long solutions across to ensure that our economy is robust enough to withstand all the shocks’’.
‘’If you take a look at our debt to GDP ratio and for that matter, how much we spent on serving our debt as a ratio of our revenue that we mobilized, it is quite high and still quite high before covid actually set in. We do have structural bottleneck that we have to address as a country’’.
With the issues of the fact that government spent GHS50.1 billion exceptional expenditure on covid-19, excess capacity charges and financial sector reform, which the country was not ready for, which also led to a significant increment in the country’s debt to GDP ratio, Dr Gyeke-Dak agreed with the Vice President stating that activities like the financial sector clean up are among the factors that have contributed to the country’s high debt to GDP ratio.
She furthered that the financial sector clean up was very necessary, adding that although the process was not well carried out and that some workers had to loss their job, the exercise was needed to avoid any future challenges.
