The executive director of the Danquah Institute, Antoinette Tsiboe-Darko, has urged Ghanaians to support the government in its efforts to rebound the economy from the current crisis.
According to her, much as the government is largely responsible for formulating policies to steer the country out of its current condition, it is also incumbent on “us as citizens to complement these efforts by contributing our quotas towards building back the economy.”
“Today, due to our interconnectedness to the global marketplace, and as the impact of external forces on our everyday lives will continue, we are faced with unforeseen challenges of the future and these are not challenges we have asked for as a people. We actually do not relish the situation we find ourselves in, but we are here and together as one, we must strive to build our nation,” Tsiboe-Darko said at an economic forum organised by the Danquah Institute (DI) in Accra.
The forum, under the theme: “Restoring macroeconomic stability and sustainable economic growth; our collective responsibility,” brought together a host of resource persons, civil society organisations (CSOs), students, and members of the public to deliberate on how to support the government to navigate this hard times.
Tsiboe-Darko recounted how the government had managed to keep the country afloat even in the face of the dreaded coronavirus pandemic. She said the government had managed the resource envelop of the country so well prior to the influx of the virus recording year-on-year single digit inflation continuously for four years, stabilised the cedi against its major trading partners and kept the country on a high growth trajectory.
Twin crises
She said though Ghana is not the only country feeling the brunt of the twin crises of COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war, its situation is peculiar given that this is not the first time the country finds itself in such a precarious economic condition, therefore something must be done to prevent the reoccurrence of such situation in future.
Present at the deliberations where the chairperson of the forum, Professor Eric Assibey, Owusu Adu Sarkodie, an economist at the University of Ghana, Kwadwo Opoku, also an economist at the University of Ghana, development economist, Agyapomaa Gyeke-Darko, George Domfe, and Ama Boafo-Arthur, a lecturer at the Department of Distance Education, University of Ghana.
Proffering solutions on the current economic hardship, Adu-Sarkodie encouraged the government to improve its revenue mobilisation effort. He said one way to do this is to use digital platforms to effectively monitor “our tax collection and clamp down on persons who evade taxes.”
He said the government must also trim the list of companies who are exempt from paying taxes as these exemptions come at a cost to the state.
On his part, Opoku encouraged the government to improve its exchange rate management. He said in doing this, the government must establish an Exchange Rate Stabilisation Fund on purchases on forex to help stabilise the cedi in periods of volatility. He added that this will help the government to properly manage the country’s exchange rate regime.
Gyeke-Darko said the government must move to make state-owned enterprises (SOEs) independent, stressing that this is one of the sustainable ways the government can free itself from the liabilities of these companies that do not contribute significantly to its revenue.
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