Feature Article of Saturday, 1 August 2015
Columnist: Kusi, Duncan
It is rather unfortunate that the government of Ghana today is using tax payers money to create an institution which sevices are not needed at this particular moment.
Just recently, an organisation called itself: National Development Planning Commision came out with its 40 years national development plan. The organisation was created by President Mahama and expecting to outdoor the plan in 4th August 2015.
According to the organisation, they are in consultation with stakeholders such as political parties, professional bodies, civil societies, social organisations and religious groups.
1.What is 40 years national development?
2. How can the country implement and achieve this plan with unstable economy.?
3.Is it a piriority for Ghana?
In business management, every long term plan is strategic and as such it needs adequate resources before the plan can achieve its objectives.
Ghana has no money to implement any long term plan to achieve her objectives because, the country continuing borrowing money with interest to pay her old debts, then how can she get money for long term projects?
2.Ghana economy is not stable particulary our currency, how can we enter into long term projects?
40 years national development is not the country’s piriority so the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) should stop wasting our scanty resources and think of how to stabilize the economy.
Before any long term plan can work, the country must stabilize the economy.
The Cedi has to be stable and it can only be stable if the government stops borrowing local currency from the central bank of Ghana to support fictitous projects such as tree planting,guinea fowl projects , (Gyeeda) and others.
Governments of Ghana including Dr Nkrumah did not follow physical monetary policy to stabilize our currency against foreign currencies.
Cote d’ Ivoire and its CFA group respect and follow the physical monetary policy and they can implement and achieve objectives of their long term plans but not Ghana.
The physical monetary policy says that country’s local currency in circulation should march with the foreign currencies in the country.
This means that if Ghana has 10 billion Cedis in circulation, she should get its correspondence foreign currencies with a value which would be equivalent to 10 billion cedis. For instance if 2 cedis are exchanged for US$1, then we may need US$5 billion. in our banks.
The reason is that the hard currencies in the country are also commodities which people use local currency to buy like we buy plantain and yam from the market so they should be available at all times to avoid inflation.
Ghana as at now has more cedis in circulation and their value do not march with the hard currencies in the country. In view of this we cannot implement and carry out any long term plan until that practice has been stopped.
The Chief Executive of NDPC should rather assists the government to fix the economy and stablize the currency against hard currencies in the country, before thinking of long term plan. I think that should be the work of an Economist.
If the commission has no solution to Ghana current economic problems, they should stop wasting our resources because that long term plan can never work until we have a stable economy.
May God bless us.