President Mahama has just announced a National Economic Dialogue. It seeks to build consensus on the current economic situation, seeks to define a fiscal consolidation strategy and seeks to outline an economic plan for the new administration.
1. It is not the first time one is being called. The National Economic Dialogues were very popular and regular before 2012. In 2014 President Mahama led the National Economic Forum (Senchi). During President Akufo Addo’s term it was expanded to even cover other sectors under the National Policy Summits from 2017 (AICC & later other regional Capitals). It is good the new administration is continuing.
2. A dialogue of this nature is good. Our democracy is strengthened when we build consensus on key issues.
3. The implementation of solutions often becomes the challenge. Many of the recommendations of the Senchi Consensus were abandoned months after meetings. Similarly, majority of the recommendations of the 2017 and 2018 National Policy Summits also fell on deaf ears. Whether or not the recommendations that will come from this forum will impact the fiscal program or even the economic program of 2025-2028 is at large.
4. Already members of the new administration appear to be at cross purposes on key responsibilities. The finance Minister is promising to create jobs begging the question, what the real economic sector ministers will be doing. Fiscal expansionism is being signalled while the President’s statement calls for fiscal consolidation. It leaves worries about the feasibility of ideas prescribed at such fora. Hopefully this dialogue should generate ideas that are feasible in fast tracking the recovery that started in 2024.
5. There are concerns that this dialogue is being set up to lay a foundation for the new administration to renege on some of their major promises. That will be a disaster. Many young people have voted with the expectation that the Political Class will live by our promises. Faith in our democracy will be severely damaged if the new administration uses the dialogue as a cover to lay a foundation to backtrack on their promises. The Politics of Promise-Win-and- Switch, must be avoided.
As the NPPs 2024 Flagbearer Dr Bawumia has said, we will not be an obstructive opposition. But we will bring to the fore all the lessons we’ve learnt in Government to help our democracy and the new administration continue with efforts to speed up the economic recovery.
We will keep an eye on this dialogue, we will point out the good parts, critique the bad parts and highlight places where we believe the administration is repeating some of the mistakes we made in our last term. The 2025 dialogue should not repeat the mistakes of the 2014 economic forum or the 2017/2018 national policy summits.
