Professor of Finance at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Professor John Gatsi, has called on government to formulate policies that target products that can be efficiently produced in Ghana to vamp up production while discouraging imports of same.
According to him, it will be most valuable for the government should it support local production of goods rather than allowing the country become a net importer of staple foods among other things.
He noted that the failure of successive governments to adequately put forward a policy framework that addresses the situation has contributed to the myriad of problems that plague Ghana’s export sector, the manufacturing sector and even the import sector.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, he said, “It is not merely about benchmark, we have myriads of problems affecting the export sector, the manufacturing sector and even the things that we import into the country.
“I think what is valuable for a country is to import what we call intermediate goods so that it will go through the value addition process, create jobs, develop the framework for revenue generation for the country. That is what we should be doing.
“But over time, the number of basic commodities that we can produce in this country has been exchanged for imports from other countries and the number keeps increasing. If you look at the statistics that is coming from the statistical service it also shows that most of our staples, we are now becoming net importers of our staples.
“So this is the area that we need to develop policy to address them, so it’s not about one single issue, it’s a myriad of issues.”
Suggesting a practical solution to Ghana’s import dependency problem and its resultant exchange rate and inflation problems, Professor Gatsi stated that the government has to begin targeting what can easily be produced in Ghana before advancing to other items.
“Now if you take exchange rate for example and inflation, they’re related. Now if you’re importing all manner of things, the simplest approach is to target those items that you know every basic school child knows that you have efficiency in producing, you target them and begin to increase their production, add value, that is what you’re supposed to do.
“But as we speak, it is not very clear whether we appreciate the disaggregation of statistical service data for us to see and know that these are the areas of problem and begin to target them and put in place the policy. So I believe our policies should be targeting the problems we have and I believe with time we’ll be able to resolve them,” he said.
