A private legal practitioner, Nii Kpakpo Samoa Addo, has called for the depoliticisation of Ghana’s economic discussion in order to help fast-track the country’s development.
Samoa Addo believes overpoliticisation of the economy by the current and previous governments has robbed the nation of much-needed economic growth.
Speaking on Asaase Radio’s Saturday morning news analysis and current affairs show – The Forum – on 8 January, about the reversal of the benchmark value policy, Samoa Addo called for a common national economic plan to implement the policy, irrespective of the political party in government.
“If you have a common plan, you know that you are not going to be worrying about your opponent hitting you in respect of the economy.
“Let him hit you because of governance issues. If you are wasting money in terms of specific projects, maybe you are buying unnecessary cars, you have appointed excess ministers … these are some of the things legitimately you can criticise,” he said.
Common plan
“But when we have a common economic plan, then we know that if for the first five years it is going to be very painful economic systems or decisions we have to take, there will be no NDC-NPP battle over whether we should have these taxes.
“For example, E-Levy: if we all agree that the economic teams of both parties must come together and say, ‘As for the economy this is what Ghana needs,’ so Ghana first,” Samoa Addo said.
He further called on current and successive governments to desist from the negative practice of collapsing businesses belonging to political opponents.
“There are some fundamental aspects of our economy that the NPP and NDC can’t fix. There must be a gentleman’s agreement at the top level that ‘let’s play politics with everything but our economy’.
“If we’re not prepared to depoliticise our economy, we will not develop as a nation because we don’t have what it takes in terms of economic structure to jump from point A to B without a common agenda. If we don’t depoliticise the economy, it will be very difficult to develop this country,” he said.
Long-term plan
Samoa Addo argued that a long-term plan for the development of Ghana’s economy must be initiated to bind any party that wins the chance to form a government, and must be implemented, obliging every government to follow that policy plan.
“We need to have a common economic plan,” he said. “That plan [will be] apolitical. We go for a national summit or something and agree that this is the plan for Ghana for the next 15 years. When you [any party] come into power you can’t change it. You are bound by it.”
Fred Dzakpata and Nicholas Brown
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