Information Minister to Alan Cash: There is no shortage of economic brains within gov’t

The government has responded to Mr Alan Kyerematen’s proposal for a bi-partisan economic reconstruction team to be set up to tackle the economic challenges of the country.

According to a Deputy Information Minister, Mr Felix Kwakye Ofosu, there was no shortage of economic brains within government to warrant Mr Kyerematen’s proposal and that his current proposals were not the panacea to the difficulties of the economy.

Mr Kyerematen after paying GH?75,000 Thursday morning to file his nomination for the New Patriotic Party’s presidential primaries slated for December 6, 2014 said he had the answers to Ghana’s economic woes and asked government to take his proposal serious.

He had proposed that government should put together a bi-partisan team of advisers and experts to develop and formulate a new economic reconstruction programme, have a private centre on business interest and job creation, arrest the decline in the value of the cedi and significantly reduce government borrowing, reduce inflation on a long-term basis as well as introduce policy measures that would lead to a decline in interest rates.

But reacting to Mr Kyerematen’s proposal in a radio interview on Joy FM, Mr Kwakye Ofosu said much as government would want to engage with dissenting views, the proposals from Mr Kyerematen were not the panacea to the difficulties of the economy.

Mr Kwakye Ofosu said he had personally constantly challenged the NPP to move away from criticising government over the management of the economy and proffer clear measurable alternatives to the policies that government was rolling out on the economy.

So the very fact that Mr Kyerematen was willing to make proposals that he believes will lead to an improvement in the Ghanaian economy was worth commending.

“But that said, I am not too sure whether the approach that he proposes is the way out because as we speak, there is no shortage of economic brains or experts within government’s economic management team.”

“It is true that we hit difficulties between 2013 and now but it is also true that most of the individuals within the economic management team were the same people at the helm of the economy when we witnessed one of the stable periods in our economic history between 2010 and 2012.”

The Deputy Information Minister argued that it was within that same period that the highest ever growth rate of the Ghanaian economy was recorded and it was also within that same period that the longest ever sustained single digit inflation was recorded.

“Within this same period we witnessed considerable stability in the value of the local currency (cedi).”

He said the Finance Minister and other officials at the Finance Ministry and those in government’s economic management team have clearly articulated measures that have been outlined to address the current difficulties.

“So yes we welcome criticisms but we welcome more especially proposals that will help address the difficulties that we have but I do not believe that the current proposals as put forward by Mr Alan Kyerematen is necessarily the panacea to the difficulties that we are having currently.”

“We will like to have greater details as to the exact steps that he wants us to take in other to overcome some of the challenges that we have.”