The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has attributed the country’s rapidly growing youth unemployment rate as fearsome and that stems from the failure of the economy to create sustainable jobs.
The Minister noted evidence shows that youth, aged 15 to 24 are much less likely to be working than adults aged 25 to 65.
This represented 52 percent of slightly more than half of the youth being employed or active in decent jobs as compared with adults, which represents 89 percent.
According to the Minister, this badly reflects the fact that most young people are still in school and at the same time, a larger share of young people are neither educated nor working compared with other adults.
Ken Ofori-Atta made this known speaking at the 5th African Think Tank Summit in Accra on Thursday.
‘’While the reasons for youth unemployment are varied, they include the deficits in basic education and job relevance; the lack of job experience, job acquisition and the difficulties in obtaining information about career options,’’ he stated.
Ofori-Atta added there has been a looming mismatch between education, job skills and the lack of experience.
He also noted the failure of Africa’s economy to create employment opportunities to commensurate with the growth in our youth population.
‘’You can’t have growth with very little impact on job creation and that becomes the problem we have to deal with,” he noted.
Outlining some measures to curb the unemployment rate, Ofori-Atta said the ‘’soon to be launched’’ Nation Builders Corps which was announced in his 2018 Budget statement will provide some 100,000 tertiary graduates with jobs.
‘’We have taken these measures to strongly revise growth from 3.7 percent in 2016 which was the lowest in two decades, to 8 percent in 2017 and this year Ghana is projected to be the world’s fastest growing economy,’’ he said.
In that regard, he said government will alternatively view all its sustainable policies, funding measures and strategies that support job creation and the establishment of business enterprises.
By Mawuli Y. Ahorlumegah