Policy interventions, stipulated by government as means of weaning the country off aid from donor agencies, are in the right direction, a former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Prof. Steve Adei has said.
He said the initiative, apart from Nkrumah’s vision of ‘self-government now’, could be the best economic policy when government is able to fully execute and implement programmes which are designed to position the country to move beyond aid.
Prof. Adei, addressing participants at the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana (ICAG), annual public lecture in Accra, said, “ initiatives including the One District One Factory (1D1F), One Village, One Dam, Planting for Food and Jobs, One District, One Warehouse and the Free SHS policy, could propel Ghana to gradually move beyond aid.”
He explained that such policies, could help restructure the economy when government considers them as not just a political mantra, but as interventions which could serve as catalyst for the country’s economic revival.
Prof. Adei maintained that though no country can be economically independent from aid, a drastic reduction in our reliance on aid and handouts from the West could only come from viable economic policies.
“It is one of the reasons why I would personally want government to gradually pursue such policies carefully and not yield to pressures by the opposing side, to quickly implement them without careful planning. Undue pressure from the citizenry to rapidly implement such promises could lead to their failure. In my view, it would take at least three years for most of such policies to start yielding fruit,” Prof. Adei stated.
In May last year, the EU Ambassador, William Hanna, donating equipment and items worth GHS 2.3 million to the Ghana Immigration Service, said, “I am thinking that in a country, where the President is talking about moving beyond aid, Ghana should maybe move away from the Oliver twist reference of ‘asking for more’ and reference Great Expectations, another book by Dickens.”
But Prof Adei, however, said the comment by the EU ambassador only means the West is actually expecting a paradigm shift from depending on donor agencies into critically formulating policies that can somehow alter our economic fortunes for good.
A council member of ICAG, Ms. Rebecca Lomo, who chaired the event, maintained that the Institute recognizes government’s effort through the 1D1F, Planting for Food and Jobs and several of the other initiatives.
“What we hope for is the will for government to carefully and wilfully implement all these policies to create opportunities for all Ghanaians,” she said.
By Wisdom Jonny-Nuekpe
