Once again, Ghanaians are being told that the economy is on track because as the Vice President put it, “the government has managed to bring the core indicators on track”.

We should therefore expect economic growth next year as the government brings down the food import bill and attempts to create jobs for the youth.

Well said, but I do not see the model we are following in our effort to grow the economy and develop the country.

Sustained growth will not start next and or even in the foreseeable future because as far as I am concerned, we as a people have not yet started the process that will bring about economic prosperity and social equity.

As the Daily Graphic stated in its editorial of Friday, 18th December, 2003 : “In most jurisdictions, when inflation drops and currencies stabilize, the prices of goods and services fall and interest rates drop.But the reverse is the case in Ghana.” This should tell us that there is something basically wrong in our country.

The indices we are measuring and basing our judgments on do not make sense in our setting.

I prefer we talk about how to bring down interests rates because that will help local investors, especially those in the manufacturing sector.

Elsewhere, when shoppers are busy shopping during Christmas, the Minister for Finance and the economic team are happy because it is a sign of increase in consumer confidence.

When people buy and consume more, manufacturers produce more and the economy is cranked up, jobs are created mostly by the private sector and everybody is happy.

In Ghana, things do not work like that. When people consume more, those who are happy are the Chinese manufacturers in Shanghai.

Almost everything consumed here, from tooth pick to military jets, is imported and this makes the economy sick.

There is also this mention of crude oil discovery every now and then. We are made to believe that it will solve all our problems. In actual fact, the Deputy Minister for Energy is on record to have said that “oil is our last hope”.
This is sad. How did countries such as Singapore with no oil, minerals, arable land, timber, gold, diamond and others make it?

We should conduct our lives as if we had no oil. That will help us and future generations. If we could not achieve any significant level of development with all the natural resources that we have, how can anyone convince me that oil can rescue us. After all, we can walk to where the gold and diamond are being mined.

We can even partake of it in the form of “galamsey” but with the oil industries, only oil specialists can get access to the oil production facilities. There will be no “oil galamsey”.

My father learned in school that the Gold Coast exported cocoa, gold, bauxite, industrial diamonds and timber. I learned the same thing, you did and our children are learning the same stuff.

The thrust of our economic policy over the years has always been to put in measures to increase the production and export of primary produce, attract foreign investors, borrow and beg from so-called development partners. The structure of our economy has not changed since “Adam and Eve”.

Gone are the days when economic prosperity was tied almost singularly to a country’s natural resources, when it was assumed that a country’s wealth was assured by the natural resources that could be found within its borders.

In our modern world where successful economies are knowledge-based and science & technology driven, no modern state can achieve or maintain prosperity without science and technology. The poverty gap is a technology gap.

We are unable to generate enough wealth to finance our national development programs and depend on foreign capital infusion, including remittances from abroad for almost 100 per cent of our development budget. No perpetual beggar nation has ever developed.
How are we going to develop if our national budgets count on “donor grants?” This may be the case over a reasonably short period but it should not be a permanent feature of economic development.

As President Obama put it his speech delivered in Accra on the 11th of July 2009… “The purpose of foreign assistance must be creating the conditions where it is no longer needed”. When are we going to start the process that will one day free us from total dependence of foreign assistance?

That process takes time. Hong Kong, Korea and now China went a certain path which took years to take them to the expected destination.

In contrast, in Ghana, a government takes office, borrows money, gets some handouts and applies a few economic tricks, within a few months the inflation drops on paper, prices of goods and services and interest rates remain high but that situation is declared as a big success that will usher in sustained economic growth. Prosperity does not come that way.

We should develop our human capital, ICT and the capacity to manufacture machines, develop processes and materials for national development.

The caveman discovered how to make and use tools, developed a logical sequence for activities, and evolved processes that added value to his life.

If in the 21st Century Ghanaians cannot manufacture tools and evolve process to keep a clean environment and perform other activities that will add value to our lives, then obviously, we are not too different from cavemen as far as technology is concerned.
Source: Prof K. Frimpong-Boateng