A former deputy attorney-general, Joseph Dindiok Kpemka, has asked Ghanaians to keep faith in the Government to lessen the economic hardship they are experiencing.
He said just like other countries, Ghana was going through a period of hardship due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war and other internal economic factors.
However, the former Member of Parliament for Tempane, in the Upper East Region, cautioned against commentaries that would dampen investor confidence and said, “let’s not create the impression that we’re in a period of apocalypse”.
“If we don’t take care, we’re going to continue to hammer certain points and create market distortions then the price increases would continue to be taken advantage of by traders and all of us will be in it,” Kpemka said.
He said this during a discussion on the current state of the economy on a local TV station on Saturday.
He said he was confident that the president’s 12-point policy agenda outlined during his address on the economy on 30 October, would make the economy “get back on its toes and take off to the land of glory”.
Kpemka, therefore, encouraged all Ghanaians to give their support to the president, and said: “I’ve not heard the president say that our cups are flowing with milk and honey”.
“As a country, what we’re supposed to be doing now is to reflect on our past, reflect on our present and chart a good path in the future to rebuild our economy to become the buoyant one that we want it to be as it started in the past,” Kpemka said.
Dr Smart Sarpong, a political scientist, asked President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to “take complete responsibility [for the current economic difficulty] and help save the situation.”
He said it had become necessary for the president to make strategic changes in the team handling the economy, including ministers, noting that such a move would “inspire some hope in the people”.
Ibrahim Murtala Mohammed, a member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Trade, called for details of the economic policies and programme solutions the president outlined to be made public to inspire confidence.
“The president addressed us to give us hope, but he may not be able to give us the details in that presentation. The expectation is that after the president’s presentation, his ministers should be giving us detailed information about what the president meant, instead of telling us that it would be in the 2023 Budget,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo in his address last Sunday said the government would among others, restore macroeconomic stability in about six months with a focus on debt sustainability to promote inclusive growth and protect the poor.
That would be done through the country’s homegrown economic programme with support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan support, and a further 30% cut in salaries of political officeholders.
The president also said there would be a review of the standards needed for imports into the country and ensure that enough local production of rice, poultry, vegetable oil, toothpicks, pasta, fruit juice, bottled water, and ceramic tiles was prioritised.